Swimming the Lethe
by Luxorien
Summary: After an infelicitous one night stand, Dean becomes a danger to Sam. Now updated to include some minor additions, like an ENDING.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Swimming the Lethe (10/10)

**Words:** 28,027

**Rating:** R (multiple f-bombs, graphic violence)

**Genre:** Gen/Dark!Dean/AU

**Pairings:** Dean/OFCs (because it's Dean)

**Chapter 1**

_Farr off from these a slow and silent stream_

_Lethe the River of Oblivion roules_

_Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,_

_Forthwith his former state and being forgets,_

_Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain._

-Paradise Lost

It was the first time one of Dean's homemade IDs had failed to get him in the door, and he was rendered momentarily speechless. Sam had to take up the slack and, predictably, he tried that "truth" thing.

"We're just trying to stop anyone else from getting hurt. That's the only reason we want to look at the files, I swear. Please."

The kid radiated emo honesty. He was the very soul of trustworthiness. Sam could say the most unbelievable things and get complete strangers to take leaps of faith for him. The same words out of Dean's mouth only produced creeped-out expressions and assumptions of criminal insanity, which Dean didn't think was fair because his police record was totally not his fault.

Well, mostly not his fault.

Sam's earnest tone would tug at the cockles of her heart or whatever damn thing and she would cave. He was certain of this.

"Yeah. Right." The deputy stared at them, her blue eyes flat as her tone.

Sam took a moment to be rendered speechless by the failure of _his _special talent. Meanwhile, Dean's brain hurtled toward the gutter.

"Come on, sweetheart," Dean drawled through his most suggestive smile. "There has to be something we can do to convince you."

The cold blue eyes lowered as Dean leaned forward over the counter and practically wiggled his ass. Sam was shooting him a look that screamed MANWHORE. He ignored it. The woman took her time dragging her gaze up his lean body and back to his face.

"You trying to bribe me with sexual favors?" she asked.

"If I say yes, will you let us into the records room?"

Dean was keeping his sights on his target, but he didn't need to see Sam's face: he could _hear _him rolling his eyes. The deputy was tilting her head contemplatively, assessing the salacious promise in his expression.

"Your brother goes," she said, tossing a key ring to Sam without looking at him. "You stay," she added, and hauled Dean over the counter with two fistfuls of leather jacket. Though he came willingly, the momentum still slammed his back into the wall. He was barely finished rebounding when she started the tonsil examination.

Dean's view of Sam's unamused expression was at that point relatively unobstructed. It was a face straight out of high school, before Dean dropped out, and Sam was still waiting around every day for his brother to finish fooling around behind the bleachers so they could go home.

Come to think of it, he'd spent an awful lot of time behind the bleachers even _after _he'd dropped out.

At least five different smartass remarks involving the word "cooties" sprang to mind, but unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on whether sex rated higher than sarcasm - his mouth was too full of the tongue of the law to use any of them. He settled for cutting his eyes to the side and motioning his brother towards the back door.

Sam wasn't gone very long, but by the time he reemerged, Dean was wearing nothing from the waist up except scars and his amulet. The cop had shed the unflattering beige uniform for muscled curves and smooth skin. Dean had considered complimenting her on her tracts of land, but wasn't sure she'd get the Monty Python reference. Also, his mouth was, once again, not taking any calls.

Sam's irritated sigh ruined the moment a little. Okay, a lot.

"Come on, Dean. Let's go."

He had to admire the way his younger brother could glower while keeping his eyes averted from the deputy's naughty bits. That was _talent_.

"Maybe we can pick this up later," Dean started as he began to reluctantly disentangle himself. He didn't get very far before he was shoved roughly back into place.

"Uh-uh," the deputy warned. "All night. That's the deal."

"Okay-twist-my-arm," Dean breathed as they recoupled. "Sorry, Sammy. I'm gonna hafta take one for the team."

"Yeah," Sam scoffed as he tossed the cop's key ring on the counter and dug in Dean's discarded jacket for the keys to the Impala. "Just make sure you can find your way back to the motel."

"Mm-hmm."

There was the sound of sulky footsteps, then the front door of the sheriff's office opening and closing. And as his jeans slid from his hips, Dean mentally checked Make Sammy Dig Up Graves While I Watch the Cute Girl off his list of Things to Do Before That Reaper Finally Catches Up with My Ass.

* * *

Dean wasn't in their room when Sam returned from the boneyard covered in filthy sweat and reeking of rot. He sighed, tossing the keys on the nightstand as he headed for the shower. Not surprising. Dean had spent entire nights "pumping" women for information before. Sam knew not to expect him before noon.

He took advantage of Dean's absence to use all the hot water. When the steam and soap had driven the stench of decaying organic matter out of his sinuses, he put on some relatively clean jeans and grabbed a book from his duffel. He'd have to start looking for their next gig in the evening, but he figured he'd earned a few hours of downtime. Chances for more than five or ten minutes of uninterrupted reading were so few and far between; living in close quarters with Dean was like living with a dervish.

For a few hours Sam could stop thinking about the job, the things he'd seen, the people he'd lost. He could stop worrying about what he might turn into or where the next attack would come from. He could stop moving and just _be _for a little while.

When his screwed-over sleep schedule finally caught up to him, there were no nightmares. No dreams at all.

It was getting dark again when Sam opened his eyes and stretched groggily. He stared at the digital display on the obligatory clock-radio for a few seconds (_7:32_) before bolting upright. Somehow, even before his eyes swept the room, he knew that everything was as he'd left it.

Dean wasn't back.

He felt the first strands of icy panic worming through his gut and ignored them. It could be nothing. Maybe Dean was still sleeping it off. Maybe he'd decided to get something to eat. Maybe he'd come back and gone out again.

Except Sam knew that no one had come in while he was asleep. Certainly not his brother. Dean never left a room exactly as he'd found it unless it was a crime scene.

And Dean would never turn off his phone.

He was out the door in seconds and on the highway a few minutes later. His quiet sense of solitude was gone, consumed by the Dean-shaped hole in his world. It felt like a string snapping under tension, like a sudden cessation of the gravity that kept them in each other's orbits. He had to find Dean before they both tumbled off into nothing.

The sheriff's office didn't look much different than it had earlier that day (or the night before, depending on how you looked at it). That middle-of-the-night electricity was gone from the air, replaced by slow-paced, small-town quiet. He headed straight for the front desk.

"I'm looking for, ah," Sam stalled a moment, trying to remember the name on the shirt he'd seen crumpled next to his brother's. "Mina Rose?"

"I'm Mina," the forty-ish, dark-eyed deputy replied. "Can I help you with something?"

In a moment, the bottom seemed to drop out of everything. This was really happening. Dean was really in trouble.

Dean was the next gig.

* * *

The trek back to consciousness never got any shorter no matter how many times Dean made it. There were always several seconds of sensory input before he was able to find the wheel again, before his grogginess finally registered and his adrenals started dumping uppers into his bloodstream.

He took in the hard, cold surface he was lying on, the absence of his shirt and the presence of his jeans and boots. He was definitely hung over, but not from alcohol. He'd been drugged, which meant somebody's ass needed kicking and he didn't have time to waste getting his shit together.

His eyes snapped open to complete blackness. He listened for a few seconds but heard nothing. Moving was next on the list, so he tried that. He was rewarded with the sound of metal jangling against stone and a sharp pull against his wrists. Handcuffs. And a chain running to a ring in the floor. Great. Way to win the Waking Up in Strange Places lottery. Why couldn't he just have been pantsless in a gutter somewhere?

He levered himself upright with his bound hands but couldn't get further than his knees on the chain's short slack. He searched his pockets. They'd been emptied, but the paperclip he kept in the waistband was still there. Sweet.

He was feeling around for a keyhole when the silence was shattered by the screeching of metal on metal. A door. Few feet away. He instinctively palmed the paperclip, though it was a senseless act in the dark.

"Hi, Dean."

He recognized the cold tone, the smooth feminine voice. Right. The deputy. That's what he'd been doing the night before - that morning. She'd been _fantastic_. Shame about the psychosis.

He cleared his throat as best he could and when he spoke his voice was a little hoarse, but otherwise steady.

"I gotta be honest with ya, this is a little kinky - even for me."

"I've been waiting for this a long time. You're hard to track down."

"Uh...thanks? Look, I'm flattered you want to join the fan club. Can't say as I blame you. But whaddya say we unlock these," he gave the metal around his wrists a quick shake, "and you can just post porn on the internet like everyone else?"

"You have something I want."

"Didn't get enough last night, huh?"

"Something that can't be bought or sold or learned."

"What is this, a MasterCard commercial?"

"Something that's not John or Sam. Just you. They make you good, but you could be so much better. Do you know what makes a good hunter great?"

Those names from her lips made him angry. Getting snatched by a fake cop-hooker from hell was bad enough, but the fact that she'd targeted his family almost had him lunging at her until his wrists bled. Or broke. He clenched his jaw until the violent fear receded.

"Any particular reason you haven't hit the lights? Not like you've got anything I ain't seen."

"They say there's only one thing faster than light, and that's darkness." He managed not to flinch when her next words sounded inches from his ear, but just barely. "You know darkness, don't you Dean? Can't you see in the dark yet?"

"I wanted night-vision goggles for Christmas, but apparently Santa isn't a tulpa after all."

He caught a flash of silver irises in the dark, glowing like cat's eyes for just a moment before his field of vision was blank again.

"There are other ways to see in the dark, Dean. So many years fighting with the odds stacked in the monsters' favor. Haven't you ever wanted to level the field?"

"Whatever. Can we get to the point of this infomercial? What's the deal? Five easy payments of $39.99 and I get a free toaster with my Lasik surgery?"

"I can give you this gift. This and many others. I can make you stronger, faster, more deadly. All I have to do is bring out what's inside of you."

"I think I _will _bring up what's inside me if this goes on much longer. You're worse than that Oxyclean guy."

"You're a true killer, Dean. Your daddy didn't have it. He thought he was willing to do what it took, but when you really needed him, what did he do? Gave himself over to the monster he'd sworn to fight with his last breath. Handed the burden on to you because he knew you'd do what he could not, end the life he wouldn't."

Something snapped inside him. He felt it cracking through his insides, whip-like and resonating. His blood hummed with it.

"Shut your _fucking _mouth," he growled, pulling noisily at the chain as he lunged impotently in the direction of her voice. He knew he'd lost his cool, was acting recklessly. He didn't care. "You don't talk about my dad, you stupid little cunt!"

"You kill clean," she continued, unresponsive. "There's no malice in it. You're a sharp edge, built for damage. And I can make you so much sharper."

"You don't know the first fucking thing about me."

"You think you won't do it? You think you'd rather die?"

_Yes. God help me, yes. Let the world burn and put a bullet in my brain first._

"I don't know what you're talking about," he breathed through clenched teeth, trying to rein himself in. But it was too late for that. Maybe it had always been too late.

"Oh, but you do, Dean. And you can do it. I can help. I can make it so much easier. So painless. All you have to do is forget. Forget everything but the kill. Be the hunter you were born to be. Be how you were made."

Her last words faded gradually and were punctuated by the creaking of the door. It closed with a solid, metallic thump, and Dean was left alone in the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

It was nearly midnight when Sam pulled into the parking lot. The last few hours had been a blur of questioning anyone who might have seen his brother, of clueless head shaking and unknowing shrugs. He was retracing their steps, geographically and chronologically. This was his last stop: last slim chance for a live lead.

Layla's was a 24/7 sort of joint, one of those combination truck stop/convenience store/greasy spoons that were usually packed this time of night. Usually. Not always. He saw a few trailer-less semis parked on the cracked asphalt, but the lot was mostly filled with silence. Sam climbed reluctantly from the Impala, feeling a strange sympathy with the groaning creak of her door hinges.

The gravely debris of the American highway crunched underfoot as he walked up to the building and through the glass door. Cloudy chrome and faded vinyl greeted his gaze once inside. He took a seat at the mostly empty counter and looked around for Charity.

He figured the lithe waitress was his best bet. She'd remember Dean - he'd spent most of a night at her place, after all - and she'd be able to tell him if his brother had been through again. He hoped.

Sam allowed himself the tiniest sigh of relief when he saw that she was on, deftly placing hot plates in front of unshaven truckers at the other end of the counter. The smell of waffles and syrup and fried eggs and bacon produced a Pavlovian response in Sam. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten something. It'd been Before, that was all he knew. Before he discovered Dean missing. Before he had to drive the Impala alone. Before the highway seemed so long and empty.

"What can I getcha?"

Sam raised his eyes to Charity's, looking at her - really looking at her - for the first time and wondering suddenly if Dean had been drawn to her because of her resemblance to Cassie. Her skin was a few shades darker, but something about her expressive eyes and the confident grace of her movements brought Cassie to mind. Then again, statistical laws alone demanded that Dean was bound to bed a Cassie look-alike at some point.

"I'll take the Western omelet. And some coffee with cream."

His voice sounded rough, even to him, but she just nodded and said, "Comin' right up."

Sam leaned on the counter and stared at his folded hands, trying to work out a game plan, hoping it would be easier to think once he had something in his stomach, knowing it wouldn't be. He heard Charity in the back asking the cook for a "Western wreck" and a few moments later she slid a plain white mug of coffee in front of him and sent two tiny plastic cups of creamer tumbling after. He glanced up and thanked her, earning a smile before she danced away down the counter to deliver an enormous stack of pancakes at the other end.

He was halfway through his coffee before he realized that he was stalling, putting off asking her because he was afraid of what she would say, or rather what she _wouldn't_ say. He needed something (anything) even vaguely resembling a lead. This was his last chance to find it before Dean's trail faded forever. Just the thought of it made the hollow ache in his chest expand and tighten at the same time.

By the time his food arrived, Sam's brief flirtation with an appetite was gone, but he forced himself to eat anyway. He was still picking at his food when the truckers paid and left. The diesel rumble of their semis filtered in from the parking lot and faded, leaving Sam alone with Charity and the distant clinking of the short order cook out of sight in the back. It was as if the universe was sending him an invitation. He reluctantly accepted it.

"Check, please."

"Somethin' wrong with your eggs?" Charity asked as she took his half-full plate.

"Just...not as hungry as I thought." He offered a conciliatory smile.

When she returned with his bill, he handed her Jim Morrison's Visa and slid off the worn barstool to follow her as she made her way down the counter to the register.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked as she swiped his plastic.

She gave him a curious look, like she was trying to get a read on him and couldn't. "If it has anything to do with my pants, it would probably be healthier not to."

Sam blinked. "No, I just...I came through here the other day with my brother, Dean. Do you remember?"

"_Dean's_ brother! Thought I recognized you. Sean, was it?"

"Sam. Um, have you seen Dean since then? Did he come back through here?"

"Nope." She slid the credit slip and a pen across the checkered surface of the counter. "And I ain't holdin' my breath neither."

Sam swore he could _feel_ the world closing in, Deanless. It pressed against him, stealing his breath.

Charity was looking at him, all the casualness gone from her bearing. "You okay, man?"

_No. There is absolutely fucking nothing okay about this._

"I'm fine, I just...ah..."

The pain started deep in his skull and radiated outward like a miniature mushroom cloud, like a nuclear explosion in his brain. He was dimly aware that he was slumped over something smooth and hard, vaguely conscious of concerned brown eyes searching out his, but those things were footnotes to the stabbing shockwaves of agony ripping through his head. Then the vision started and how much he hurt seemed inconsequential.

_Darkness. But he sees. Dean. Handcuffs dangling from one bloody wrist. Blood. Blood everywhere. His back is coated in it. Torn muscle and the whiteness of bone beneath. Coughing. Trying to speak, but there are no words, just more blood. He's choking on it. Someone standing over him. Blue eyes __have __turned to silver, b__ut it's her. It's HER._

When the pain faded and the world slammed disorientingly back into place, he was greeted with the ouchy end of a subcompact Kahr. It was close enough to his face that he could read the model number etched into the slide. Charity's eyes were wide with confusion and fear, but her double-handed grip was steady.

"The _hell_ did you just do?" Anger layered over barely-concealed panic.

Sam stayed very still. "Take it easy. I just...I have these headaches sometimes-"

"Don't jerk me around," she demanded, voice dangerously low and hands unflinchingly still. "You just mindfucked me or something. Get an answer. Now."

"Look.." Well, hell. A forty-five-caliber argument was very persuasive. "I have these, uh, visions sometimes. That's all it was." _Yeah. Just a little vision. Of the last person I saw with my brother standing over him as he bled to death. Happens all the time. No biggie. FUCK._

"I can't…tell if you're lying." Sam's tone had placated her a little and confusion was overtaking the anger in her tone.

"Look, just - can we point the gun in a safe direction and talk about this?"

"Why would you have a vision of Dean like that?" she asked haltingly. "What - what does it mean?"

Sam stared. "How do you know I saw Dean?"

* * *

Dean was starting to get frustrated.

Normally, he liked a challenge. He wanted to work for that perfect hustle or one-night stand or brilliant bit of credit card fraud. If everything came easily, if there was no possibility of failure, then where was the fun?

But that crazy bitch was gunning for Sammy and he didn't care how easy or difficult it was: he needed out. There was always another bar, another woman, another falsifiable application. Only one Sam.

The only grudgingly nice thing he had to say about the cuffs was that they were surprisingly comfortable. Otherwise, they were an absolute _bitch_. There was nothing in the key shaft for the paper clip to catch and jarring the pins accomplished nothing aside from bruising his wrists, et cetera and so on. One method left, and he wasn't sure he was quite that desperate.

Broken bones he could handle. He'd even put up with permanent nerve damage if he had to. The problem was the chain. No way he'd be able to break it, which meant he'd have to get both hands out of the cuffs. Which would mean disabling _both_ hands. Which would mean not being able to hold a weapon or even open a damn door: two things he would prefer to be able to do while breaking out of some insane harpy's lair.

He exhaled sharply over clenched teeth. If it came down to crushing both his hands, so be it. But he wouldn't do it a moment before he had to.

He slipped the paperclip back into the waistband of his jeans and groped in the dark for the chain, trying to feel some weakness he could exploit. The metal was smooth and unbroken. Clean, as much as metal could be clean, though it still gave his hands that gritty, nickels-and-pennies feel. It was painfully obvious that there was nothing more he could do to improve the situation, so he resigned himself to sitting in the dark and waiting.

The waiting was the worst. He'd always hated waiting. And waiting in handcuffs was about the worst thing he could imagine. Besides waiting in handcuffs on an airplane - that would suck hard. However, knowing that the situation could be (slightly) worse didn't really help. He was still rushing headlong into the kind of animal panic that drives a fox to gnaw its leg out of a trap. His mind was stuck in an endless loop of _get out_ and _Sammy_; the stillness was strangling him. He had to do something.

So, he started at the beginning: blood and fire and a child's grief. He sank deep into memories that were treasured simply because they were his and no one else's. Many of them weren't pleasant, but they were comforting, in a harsh sort of way. They explained the world.

_Take your brother outside as fast as you can! Don't look back! Now__, Dean - __go!_

_She would want me to be brave. And I think about that every day._

And from time to time, there had been shafts of light flung across the path: Sammy smiles, Sammy starts walking, Sammy goes to school. Sammy _loves_ school. Dean had been six when Dad first started trusting him with important jobs like _clean the semiautos_ and _watch out for your brother_. He didn't remember much of the time before that; it was a blur of ashes and smoke and silence. Life seemed to start again when he had something to _do_. Even when Sam was a royal pain in the ass, it was like that stupid little baby was providing the gravity their broken family had lost. Sam made Dean a link in a chain: there was someone to follow and someone to protect. Dean had a place and a purpose. Watching out for him was both the hardest and the easiest thing in the world to do. And the moments of peace didn't mean anything without the frustration and failure. Every time he sighed and pushed down his anger, his restlessness, was a victory. Every time he gave something for Sammy instead of himself, he was winning something back from the dark.

Hours passed and years flashed before Dean's eyes. He'd gotten to high school, to _Our Town_, when the door opened again and his world became that sound.

"It's almost time." The woman's voice floated out of the blackness. She sounded like a phone sex operator. Not that Dean knew what those sounded like. "But there are still some preparations to make."

There were hands on him then, cold and hard and strangely lifeless. The chain rattled, slipped away, and the moment his hands were free he was moving, fighting blind and vicious. She'd left him his boots (_stupid_) and he knew he'd be breaking bones if he could connect. But his well-balanced kicks jarred his legs more than the figures holding him. It was like kicking sand or clay or the earth itself. Solid. Unyielding.

He squirmed wildly, lashed out with every dirty close combat move his dad had taught him, and even a few he'd discovered on his own. But he couldn't break away, couldn't budge those iron limbs. They ignored his struggles, unlocked the handcuffs and spread his arms as they slammed him face-first against the wall. New shackles replaced the old, pulling at his wrists so his arms remained taut. Something was pressing his legs against the wall with bone-crushing force. He could barely move and what little fight he was able to put up was accomplishing nothing more than additional bruising for his already battered body.

He didn't care. It was the principle of the thing.

"Please tell me you didn't arrange all this for a lonely trucker," he gasped as he twisted uselessly against his bonds. He felt annoyingly vulnerable with his back exposed.

"You shouldn't struggle, Dean. I need you awake and still for this part. You have no idea how horribly wrong things will go if your movement alters the runes."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," he replied, going for a little double entendre.

"This is for your own good."

It happened so quickly, that he had no time to prepare himself. Not that it mattered. All the preparation in the world wouldn't have kept his body from reacting.

His neck arched and his mouth opened in a prolonged breathless gasp. For a few moments there was nothing but the pain. Then his suddenly sluggish brain registered what had happened, that she'd slid something right through each shoulder, effectively pinning him to the wall so that the slightest movement caused even greater agony to ripple through his torso as whatever she'd used ground against the now broken bones in his shoulders. He couldn't even think about his arms, couldn't feel them. Were they still there? Did it matter? _Godfuckingdamn_ it hurt.

There were cool, soft hands on his neck. Warm breath caressing his earlobe as crazy psycho chick made low comforting noises at him. He wanted to snap his head back and splatter her nose all over her pretty cheekbones, but it wasn't quite worth jarring his shoulders. Blood oozed down his chest and back, spattering occasionally on the floor with a low wet sound.

"Stay with me, Dean," she whispered. "You have to stay conscious. Don't worry. This'll all be over soon..."

Okay, his arms were definitely still attached because now he could feel needles in them. Real, literal fucking _needles_: a drop of water in an ocean of pain.

"You-you're..._inkin'_ me?" he gasped out, as he realized what was happening. "You gotta...gotta be fuckin' kidding."

The woman didn't respond, but she remained pressed up against him, holding on, as if her touch would keep him conscious. Maybe it would. He didn't know. His brain was having trouble moving beyond the receiving stimuli step.

Time sort of stopped and sped up at the same time, so he had no idea how much had really passed when she started speaking again. This time, he clearly recognized an incantation, though the language was unfamiliar. It sounded like a cross between German and Gaelic. And as it went on, he felt the ink that was now scattered over his skin burning like a brand, felt the wild thrum of magic in the fingers on his neck, the breath in his ear. He felt it diving down inside him, winding around the secret places of his heart and binding them in iron and frost.

He couldn't have screamed if he'd wanted to.


	3. Chapter 3

Charity decided that she was having a bad day.

Some of it was little stuff: she'd been late for work, Sarah had called in sick, somebody'd hit a skunk on Highway 18…and there was the possibility of someone walking into the restaurant and calling the cops to arrest her for brandishing. Okay. Those were what her grandmother used to call "worries." Not day-breakers.

But Sean – no, _Sam_ – was definitely cause for an official announcement of Tuesday's ruin. She'd seen things in her goddamned head when she touched him. And now, trying to look inside him and read his intentions, she was stymied for the first time in her life. Either he was immune to her special talent or he was a robot, because she saw neither deception nor truth. It was as if he didn't exist for her. It was fucking creepy.

He was looking at her through his boyish bangs, eyes frighteningly full of..._something_. Charity tightened her grip on her gun, fingers digging into the crosshatching.

"You saw what I saw," he said. A statement, but he sounded surprised. He _sounded_.

"What do you want from me?"

"I swear, I just want to find my brother." Earnest. Pleading. _True?_

She was taken by a sudden overwhelming urge to concede; to trust; to do whatever he asked because _he_ asked; to make the desperation in those soft eyes go away. It was as if Dean was right beside her, bleeding into her. She could feel the fire in him as clearly now as she had two days previous, when he'd been hitting on her and she'd taken a speculative look inside him to see what sort of lover he'd be.

If Sam was a hole where a person should have been, Dean was a mass of nuclear fusion, slinging great plumes of soul-fire into the empty space around him. At the time, Charity had only cared that he was full of life and heat, and devoid of homicidal tendencies. Now she recalled the filial devotion that fueled the flames, and knew that it had captured her and chained her down to the need in those used-to-be little-boy eyes.

She'd never had to trust anyone before, never had to rely just on what she saw or heard. She'd always been _sure_. But Sam was at the center of Dean's fire, and she supposed a good reference would have to be enough. She lowered the gun, slipped it back into her waistband holster.

"Okay. So. You have...visions."

"Yeah," he replied, relaxing slightly.

"What does this mean? Dean...Dean's..." She couldn't say it. They'd both seen him bleeding out, choking on his own blood. She hadn't expected to ever see him again, but the thought of him dead...

"Not yet. I mean, what I see, I can change."

"Future tense." Fucking unbelievable. But then, so was looking into people's souls.

"Yeah. So if there's anything you can tell me. Anything at all."

"I..." She was overwhelmed again by that intrusive feeling, that burning urge to level mountains and boil oceans to take away the pain in that boy's eyes. But even if she wanted to follow that impulse, she didn't know how. "I'm sorry. I haven't seen him."

"What about the woman? From the vision. Her eyes were silver there, but they would have been blue if you saw her."

She opened her mouth to give him another painful negative, but something tugged at the back of her mind, something she had to pause to try and identify. What was it?

"What?" Sam asked, his eyes locked on hers.

"I don't...I don't know." She closed her eyes and measured her breaths, examining that tiny nagging feeling, following it like a thread. Slowly. Patiently. It was buried deep under a thousand other inconsequential memories, but it was there. Somewhere. A memory of that face. Of ice-blue eyes.

It was like clawing at a crumbling wall. Once she had a piece loose (_that face_) the rest fell smoothly, barriers toppling like dominoes. And she _remembered_.

"Oh, that _bitch_."

* * *

Dean woke up, and took that as evidence that he was still alive.

Unfortunately.

He was lying on the floor again, unable to stop shivering on the cold concrete, though the smallest movement sent agony radiating through his chest and down his arms. Even the blood coating his skin felt cold and sticky, not warm like it should have. He felt icy steel on his wrists again and would have laughed if he'd had the energy. He could just make out the faint clink of the chain in the silence. Where the fuck did that crazy bitch think he was going?

There was nothing he could do except lie there on his side, chained and shivering and bleeding out into the darkness. So that's what he did. He hadn't been doing it very long when the door creaked open again and that voice wafted towards him.

"It's time, Dean."

He didn't respond, didn't see the point. All his strength had trickled out and sunk into the cold floor. He could feel himself going into shock, the shivers already growing less pronounced.

Gentle hands removed one of the bracelets from his wrist and rolled him over so that he was lying face-down. The pain was excruciating and he wasn't sure why he didn't pass out, except that the warm fingers were on his neck again, holding on, keeping him there.

"No one's attempted this in more than a thousand years." The voice was a low whisper now, soft and filled with an unnatural lust. "I'm going to make you perfect."

The scream that Dean couldn't contain came out as a grunting moan when she made the first cut. Her touch on his neck stilled the tremors but the knife was so much worse than that had been, and he wanted to fight, to struggle, to scream, to die, but she wouldn't let him. He lay there, eyes open in the dark, and let it wash over him and through him until he wasn't sure there was anything left.

She was cutting deep into his back, through the dermal layers down into muscle, scraping against bone. She was whispering incantations again, matching the power of the words to the power of the symbol she was etching deep into his back.

_Horsa __leoht ond Hengest guthwine  
With __hel-runan, with ealle hetelic thingas  
Nithplega__ gethafas, nacod laetan  
T__hingian, thaet dyrne ne beon thrym…_

He could feel her speech and the emerging pattern of agony across his shoulder blades beating in time with one another even as his own heartbeat slowed. It felt like he was freefalling, nothing but empty space all around him, no up and no down. Then, from somewhere far away, he heard what he somehow knew was a final word, and it was tugging at him, pulling him, whether farther down or back up he couldn't say.

_Let go, Dean. I've got you. You're so tired. Just let go and forget. I promise it will stop hurting, and Sammy will be safe. You can rest now. I'll make sure Sammy's safe. Nothing is safer than death. You know, that. You know that so well. Don't you want Sammy to have what you've been aching for? Don't you want him to be at peace?_

He tried to fight, but he was so tired of fighting. He tried to breathe, but it was too hard. Everything he was stopped, and in the space between heartbeats something else took over.

His eyes snapped open to concrete next to his face, smooth and crimson with his blood. He moved instinctively, automatically, and he could feel things grinding and twisting inside of him in ways that should have made it impossible to do so. He ignored the sensation, didn't have time for it. He could feel the threat standing over him, saw the gore-covered knife inches from his bloody hand. Pushed himself up smoothly, grabbed the weapon with the same grace. He didn't need to look to find her heart, didn't need another second to find his target or maneuver his body into a striking position. It was one coordinated, lightening movement. There was no thought, no motive, no complicated impression. He let his body translate stimuli into reactions that were purely instinctual.

He held onto the knife as he watched the light in the silver eyes fade. She died with a smile on her face and he could no more summon confusion or curiosity over that than he could summon any sort of feeling about her death at all. She had been a threat. He had eliminated her.

That was all. There was nothing else.

* * *

Sam, feeling a bit like Dean in one of his gun porn moods, made sure he had a backup for his backup before they went in. Charity had led him to a foundry, a labyrinth of rusting metal and crumbling catwalks. Any equipment that could be liquidated had long since been removed, but the place still retained the smell of use under the metallic odors of decay and obscurity. It conjured images of hot slag and alloying metal. It was a place of both purification and adulteration; of focused, imposed change. This was where not-Mina Rose had gone after she stole a lock of Charity's hair and spelled her into silence and forgetfulness.

"Okay, you got me here," Sam said as he slammed the trunk and came around the side of the car. "You should-"

"Sam." Charity's eyes were level and pained. "She stuck her skanky little hands _in my brain_. And stole my hair. Who _does _that? Maybe this kinda thing happens to you all the time, but I'm not bailing. I can't."

_That's the point,_ he wanted to argue. _I'm used to this. You're not._ There was also the small matter of _why _not-Mina would be interested in Charity and how Charity knew where she was going. Sam wasn't convinced she was being completely forthcoming about her reasons for tagging along. But time was slipping by all around them, so he just sighed and took the lead. This was where the psychic trail ended; it would be close combat tactics from here on out. He drew his Sig and braced it on the hand holding the flashlight as he headed for the entrance.

The door opened on a wide, industrial space, littered with broken furnaces and giant slag buckets. The sounds of their footsteps stuttered around corroding metal and years of accumulated filth. Color-coded pipes ran in various directions, displaying faded lettering and stamped symbols. The air was heavy, thick with the absence of sentience. Sam thought of Dean in this place (_trapped/hurt_) and he wanted to scream, to run through every room, chasing the battering beating of his heart through the darkness to his brother. A lifetime of reluctant training and hard-learned prudence held him back; he took careful, measured steps, watching and listening as he systematically searched the room.

In the sepulchral silence, he should have been able to hear even light footfalls. His own were echoing modestly, though he consciously cushioned his steps. Sort of silly that he was even trying, considering how loudly Charity's boots were striking the concrete floor. Still, it was habit, and it lessened the static he had to filter out as he listened. But all the listening in the world wouldn't have helped. It was only dumb, blind (deaf) luck that he saw a shadow's movement in the faintest corner of the flashlight's arc. By that time, it was too late to do anything that was calculated or quiet.

He whipped the beam around, muscles snapping with adrenaline and long habit. It took him fractions of a second to begin sighting on his target, to recognize that target as Dean, face curiously intent, light flashing silver off his irises. Fractions of a second to hesitate and to realize that his moment of hesitation would cost him his life because Dean (_Dean!_) was coming at him with a stained blade in one bloody fist.

The world was like sand slipping through his fingers. He had no space to act, only to watch, as if his life, his hour of death, had become a vision in someone else's head.

The report from Charity's compact .45 exploded towards the wide walls, and sent an ejected casing skittering across Sam's cheek. He smelled the sharp sting of powder, memory of a thousand practice sessions, a thousand battles. And he saw her double tap Dean's center mass, watched his brother crumple bonelessly to the ground with two hollowpoints in his chest.

He turned his weapon on Charity as naturally as he'd turned it away from Dean. In the sharp light, her features looked ghostly, unreal. She was still in her shooting stance, staring at the body on the ground. When she turned to look at him, the devastation in her eyes almost made him take his finger off the trigger.

Almost.

"Drop the gun."

She crouched slowly and placed the Kahr on the floor. "Sam, I'm sorry," she said. But her voice carried the guilt of someone who had done the hard thing, not someone who had made a terrible mistake. He wanted to shoot her. He wanted to empty his magazine into her. He wanted to eat the round that was in the chamber. He wanted to hold his brother's body and scream. But the world was too new, too empty for him to do anything but stand there numbly.

"Sam, he was already gone." Her eyes seemed to cloud over. "He was gonna kill you. He wasn't confused or angry or…he was gonna kill you and walk outta here like nothing happened."

And he knew she was right. He could read his brother's body language as easy as breathing, even when Dean wasn't broadcasting his intentions like that. He'd been going for Sam.

"Then it's not Dean." He spoke the words at the same time he thought them. Of course it wasn't Dean. It couldn't be. Maybe something that could shapeshift, maybe-

"It was him," Charity insisted, eyes glistening. "I'm telling you, he was already gone."

Sam tightened his grip. "How the hell would you know? You've been pulling an awful lot of convenience information out of your ass tonight. Why are you doing this?"

"I can- I can read people, okay? I can sort of…see inside."

"So you're a mind-reader now? A human MRI machine? And you just wanna help out of the goodness of your heart, right?"

"I saw this place, when that- that woman did her witchy shit. I didn't remember until you showed up. And Dean-" She choked off, trembling. "Sam, I looked at him and there was nothing. He'd been cleaned out. He was gone."

Sam was trying to formulate an answer when Dean stirred, rising slowly to his knees. Sam saw Charity take a step back even as he swung the light away from her and towards his brother. Dean coughed and spat blood before turning silver-tinted eyes first on Sam, then on Charity and her gun, lying a few yards away. Sam felt something inside him twist and fall away as he realized that Charity had been right. It was his brother but not his brother, regarding him with cold, predatory calculation. He struggling to breathe with the weight of what was going on.

"Charity," he called without cutting his eyes away, without blinking. "Pick up your gun and check out the rest of this place." He waited while she got over the shock of seeing someone come back from two .45s to the chest at close range. Waited while she stepped carefully behind him and continued through the broken landscape of forgotten steel. Waited for the heavy sound of her steps to recede into the darkness and ignored her backward glances.

"Who are you?" he asked as Dean climbed calmly to his feet.

"You know who I am, little brother."

"You can't be. Dean wouldn't-"

"I promised Dad I'd kill you. That was the last thing he ever said: that I had to kill you if I couldn't save you. That demon wants you for somethin'. Smart thing would be to make sure he can't touch you. Ever."

Sam struggled to keep his breathing steady, to keep his grip tight and his eyes on his target.

"You shouldn't ask for promises you don't want me to keep. We hunt evil, Sam, remember? Doesn't matter if it's human or not. Come on. Give me the gun. You know I'll make it quick."

He would have preferred an evil Dean, a possessed Dean, a deranged Dean. Anything else but this strange dispassionate version of his brother. It didn't just look like Dean. It acted like him, felt like him - or what Dean would feel like if twenty-two years of brotherhood ceased to have any meaning for him.

"You're lying."

Dean just looked at him. No anger. No indignation. No sadness. No hate. Nothing.

"What happened to you, man?" Sam whispered. "What did she do to you?"

His brother's dead, silver eyes were his only answer.


	4. Chapter 4

The logistics were maddening, not because it was a complicated process, but because it meant treating Dean like a rabid dog. Yet the characterization was devastatingly close to the truth: Dean was constantly coiled to strike. Sam had already been forced to shoot him again. He'd only looked away for a second, but that had been enough for his brother to make a play for the gun.

Sam allowed himself to relax slightly once Dean was secured in the room where not-Mina had done whatever she had done. Locking his brother up was ten kinds of wrong, but he didn't see any alternative. He couldn't hold a gun on Dean while he searched for a way to undo whatever had been done to him. And, like it or not, the bitch had left behind a perfect set-up, one that simply could not be matched by the amenities (HBO and a fridge) offered at the Lookout Motel.

"Charity, you don't have to stay," he grunted as he dragged the body they'd found to an even more discreet location.

Though she observed his efforts with wide eyes and did not offer to serve as an accomplice, she shook her head firmly. "I wanna help, if you think there's a way to reverse this…shit. This _spell _or whatever."

Sam tossed the still-warm corpse into the defunct incinerator he'd picked out. If Dean had been there, he would have made some crack about the irony. They'd burned bodies in some weird places; an actual incinerator had to be a first. But Dean wasn't there, so Sam said nothing as he poured on the salt and lighter fluid. The woman's eyes stared triumphantly, and it was that more than anything that made Sam uneasy. What the fuck was she so happy about?

The fire caught easily and spread rapidly. It was probably the freshest corpse he had ever burned, and he turned away quickly from the smell. Her clothes and the fat in her tissues would fuel the flames until there was nothing left but charred ash. Despite the grimness of the task, Sam found a sick kind of satisfaction in knowing that the bitch would rot, unburied and unmourned, in this deserted maze of rust and grime. Then he thought of his brother chained to the same place and he wanted to throw up.

"I'll take care of this. Just-" Sam sighed and started walking back towards Dean. "Go home."

"I…can't."

The strangled, rasping whisper gave Sam pause. He stopped, and turned to look at her. The flashlight fell on features taut with distress. Her eyes were bright and her hands were shaking.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

"I can't leave you."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. It's Dean, he- I just can't. He wouldn't. So I can't."

"That doesn't make any sense," Sam replied, frowning.

"He's in my head." She put a hand to her temple and scrunched her eyes shut a moment, shaking her head as if she could extricate herself from some mental entanglement. "I felt it after you had your vision or whatever at the restaurant. I can't read you at all, but Dean…I can feel him. I can't leave. I have to help."

"So," Sam said, regarding her doubtfully. "You think he's still…there? Communicating with you?"

"No, I…think he left something behind when I read him that first time. It's never happened before, but-" She cut off, shrugged. "It's like getting a song stuck in your head or something."

Sam regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then grunted and continued down the corridor. Charity followed, and the discussion faded, unresolved. When they returned to the bloody room to find Dean just as they'd left him, some of the tension eased from Sam's body. He had half-expected his brother to have pulled another impossible trick. There was some comfort in knowing that steel would hold him. It was a strange, cold sort of comfort, but Sam was willing to take what he could get.

He tried to ignore the blood that had pooled on the floor and dried on the walls. Dean's utter indifference made it especially hard. Dean should have cared that he was kneeling in blood he had shed, that he was back where he'd been before the cavalry rode to the rescue. It should have outraged and confused him. His robotic acceptance, his calculating patience, made Sam feel guilty as hell.

"What happened here, Dean?"

As before, there was no answer. His brother (what was left of him) refused to talk. When Sam looked into those glittering, predatory eyes, he saw Dean on the hunt: frozen in that moment of patience and perfect focus.

Sam let out a frustrated breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and scanned his brother for any clues that could not be kept silent. Dean was wearing what he'd had on - god, had it been the night before? There were two entry wounds on his chest, and blood spatters on his jeans, but no other signs of injury. Yet this was the room from the vision, and there was more blood here than their adversary's death could account for.

"This is where the vision took place, yeah?" Sam asked, sweeping the room with the flashlight before tossing an inquiring expression towards Charity.

"Yeah. I mean, I think so."

"And what we saw…happened. We didn't stop it. We couldn't have."

"But we, you saw him…I mean, he's still alive. So it couldn't-"

"Yeah, he's still alive. With two rounds in him."

Dean's eyes glowed more brightly with the light directed elsewhere. Sam turned back to him and they dimmed. Weird.

"Dean, take off your jacket and shirt."

Dean considered the request a moment, and Sam put on his best ido it or I'll make you do it/i expression. Dean bent down and pulled both garments over his head with his bound hands.

"Jesus," Charity breathed.

Sharp lines of fresh scar tissue crisscrossed Dean's arched upper back, tracing an intricate spellform. His arms were heavily inked with additional symbols stretching from shoulder to wrist. Whatever spell or spells the witch had used, they were heavy shit, anchored in painstaking ritual and designed to channel considerable power. That they had to be both permanent, and etched in blood and flesh, meant seriously dark magic. The most powerful rituals demanded the most significant sacrifices.

Sam let out a breath, mouth grimly set, expression pensive.

"I'm gonna have to make some calls."

* * *

It took twelve hours and fifteen cups of caffeine for Sam to find what he was looking for. Just drawing the symbols up took a considerable chunk of time, but he didn't dare pass photos around for fear of revealing Dean's present state to hunters of the Gordon Walker variety. Then there was the obligatory internet search, which turned out to be a giant waste of time, even with Ash's help. Despite all the people patting themselves on the back about the internet revolution, a frustratingly large amount of information was still only available at research libraries or in private rare book collections. Even universities with digital facsimile projects did not assign a very high priority to grimoires or collections of incantations. He spent hours on the phone, tracking down every contact he had, starting with Bobby and ending with the last page of his father's journal. It took every cajoling ounce of diplomacy he could force into his voice to convince them to pass the word on, to spread it like a virus throughout the distributed network of hunters.

_It's Dean. It's my brother. My _brother_. Do you understand?_

But he didn't dare reveal the full extent of the problem. As far as the others were concerned, it was just another hunt; he was afraid for the innocent who might be hurt, not terrified for the only family he had left. He talked softly when he wanted to scream, prodded gently when he wanted to barrel forward. Sometimes being John Winchester's son hurt his case more than helped it, but ultimately the sense of common purpose that existed throughout the loosely organized community was enough. He worked his way down the list with a careful, unfelt methodicism, until someone found him a source.

It was someone who knew someone whom Bobby knew: Aaron Paterson, a researcher at Notre Dame, and a man accustomed to breaking into the library when a hunter needed some obscure scrap of information and needed it _yesterday_. His voice was hushed as he described what he'd found, and Sam could just imagine him sitting covertly in some flashlight-lit room, wearing the obligatory white gloves as he leafed through a fragile manuscript valued at thousands of dollars.

"These diagrams look like amalgamations of a bunch of different traditions. There are Persian, Mediterranean and Greco-Roman influences for starters. And the way the water symbols are used, there are some Germanic and Celtic influences there. That, and the dates on some of these containment circles made me think we were looking for something Anglo-Saxon, around the turn of the second millennium."

"So you have a record of the ritual?" Sam asked, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice.

"I've got a Kentish manuscript here from around that time. It describes several rituals that use some of the symbols you sent, but not in this combination. I think we're looking at two separate rites here. I can get you a translation for one of them, but the other? If there's a record of it, I can't find it. Give me a few years, I might be able to track something down, but…"

"What do you know about the one that is included?"

"Well, it's not exactly black magic. It's part of a series of religious rituals appealing to God or gods for protection." There was the sound of papers being shuffled and keys being tapped. "Uh, looks like an analog of Freya, the horse brothers, the Virgin…kinda all over the map."

"What sort of protection is it designed to provide?"

"Armor for the fight against evil, that sort of thing. I don't know, I haven't finished translating the incantations. Some of these look like nonce words, maybe-"

"Can you send me the translation when its finished?"

"Sure. You'll probably also be interested in the parts of the puzzle that don't fit, though."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, some of these lines have been altered. I'll have to do some more digging to figure out what's going on, but this might be the black magic you were talking about. It looks like somebody might have used a tainted version of one of these spells."

Sam swallowed hard. "Okay. Just, let me know what you find."

"Will do."

"Thanks, man." And he meant it.

"Yeah, well. It's everybody's fight, isn't it?"

* * *

Charity had tried sitting outside the heavy, reinforced door, but not seeing him was worse than seeing him. At least inside she knew what he was doing: staring at her with those freaky eyes. If she shined the flashlight directly at him, the disconcerting silver hue would go away, but she felt bad doing it, even if he didn't seem to mind, didn't react at all beyond an involuntary constriction of the pupils.

The longer she stayed, the deeper the ice behind his eyes settled in her bones, latching on and pulling until she was shivering despite the mild weather. It was a terrible emptiness, pitiless and inexorable. She wanted to run, but the memory of what he had been kept her, called to her. _Save Sam_, it whispered.

She tore her gaze away long enough to glance at her watch. Ten minutes had passed since her last check-in, so she texted the obligatory all-clear to Sam's cell. Fuck, but she was tired. Dean's hypnotic, animal stare wasn't helping. Didn't he have to sleep? He certainly didn't look tired. She felt like hell, and was fumbling with her fifth Red Bull when she didn't notice the world slip out from under her.

_It is a soft, dark dream, full of vague movements and shadowy figures. She is looking for something and she can't find it and...what was she looking for? She's moving restlessly, fleeing something, trying to maneuver into a position where it can't get her, where she can be safe and forget about everything because she is so tired and the darkness is so soft..._

_She is in the water, drifting pleasantly, though completely submerged. It is smooth and warm and weightless. Comforting. There are vague, umbrous movements around her, but she ignores them as she glides deeper into a bliss so complete as to obliterate thought entirely._

_Yet somehow that vague sense of searching for something returns: something she's forgotten, something important...what was it? She looks, but whatever she seeks is always just out of reach, just beyond her sight..._

_And then she sees him in the water, drifting lifelessly, his limbs gently supported by the currents, face serene as death. She reaches for the pale face, not sure if this is what she seeks, but feeling as though she ought to know those eyes, if only they would open..._

_Silver ice and emerald fire. Churning turbulence in the water. She is looking into the face of a drowning man. She is drowning herself, lost in the terrible, cyclic pull. Someone shouts soundlessly_

_SAMMY_

_and then she is running through heavy smoke that feels like water, thick and suffocating. There is heat and flickering light, but she runs, lungs burning, she runs, holding a tiny squirming bundle to her chest and not daring to look back..._

There was no slow approach to wakefulness. She snapped her eyes open to see Sam standing over her, breathing slightly faster than normal, a semiautomatic in one hand, but turned away, his trigger finger against the slide.

"Oh God," she breathed, feeling unaccountably out of breath. "Shit. Fell asleep-"

"It's okay," he replied, crouching next to her. "I was just worried when you didn't check in. But I don't think Dean's...going anywhere."

She glanced at Dean to find him just as he'd been before she fell asleep: calm, silent, coiled. She looked away quickly.

"Did you find anything?" She stretched and rubbed at her scratchy eyes.

When he didn't immediately respond, she squinted up at him in the faint light, trying to ignore Dean's cats' eyes boring into her from the center of the small room.

The grave, determined set of Sam's jaw seemed distinctly out of place on him. It clashed with his unassuming, college-student haircut and clothes, making him look like an overgrown kid. The practiced grip on the gun helped balance things a little, but his eyes still looked so much older than the rest of him.

"I think I've got something that might work, but...you don't have to be here for this. Go home. Get some sleep. You've done more than enough-"

"Sam, if there's anything I can do, I want to help."

He turned away from her then, eyes fixed on Dean's.

"I'd like to be alone with my brother."


	5. Chapter 5

"You could say something." Sam sighed and leaned back against the wall, Sig still in hand. "I know you want to kill me, but don't you want to tell me your evil plan first?"

Dean gazed at him emptily.

"Yeah." He scoffed. "You don't have an evil plan. That's sort of the point, isn't it? Well, maybe I'll tell you my brilliant plan to save your sorry ass."

Sam slid down the rough wall and held his gun carefully in both hands, his attention still on Dean but his eyes watching the dull gleam of the flashlight on the weapon's alloy frame.

"The ritual she used is obscure. No record of anyone ever pulling it off. It's supposed to be a last ditch defense against evil. You take a willing sacrifice and call on the gods to recognize that sacrifice with divine gifts." His tone was as mild as it ever was when they were on a hunt, hashing out theories or reporting on research. He knew nothing he said would make any difference to Dean as he was, but it felt wrong to do what he came to do without a word of explanation. "No specifics on what form those divine gifts should take, but there's some stuff about the recipient's soul, I guess, being uncovered. Actually, the word is _nacod_, which became _naked_. I thought you might enjoy that."

There was, of course, no response from Dean. No dirty joke, no leer, no playful bite of the tongue. None of those things would serve any tactical purpose. Sam hit the mag release on the Sig and then cleared the pipe. He would approach Dean symbolically unarmed.

"Thing is, she modified the ritual. Added something. Used a seal to lock you away while you were…open. I have no idea why. But I can fix it." He took a breath. "I think."

In the garish light, his hand looked as pale as the chalk he held, but it was steady as he drew the lines of the symbol around Dean. He'd carefully memorized the words of the fourteenth-century counterritual. Latin slipped from his tongue in graceful, rolling cadences. The magic slowly took hold, locking Dean more firmly in place than physical restraints ever could. Sam removed the cuffs and shifted Dean's arms out to the sides.

He drew the tactical knife he'd prepared: eight inches long, razor sharp, and illegal in most states. It felt heavy with blood that hadn't even been shed yet. He hesitated a moment and then plunged it into his frozen brother's back, pushing Dean to the ground with the force of it. The move didn't even elicit a grunt. Sam put an unnecessary steadying hand on Dean's neck and began adding fresh lines to the pattern of scars on his brother's back. The only sound Dean made was a rough, wet coughing when his lungs filled with blood, but Sam could see the fatal wounds beginning to mend themselves already, even through the stinging dampness in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he whispered, and then finished off the incantation in the original language of the Anglo-Saxon ritual.

_"__Modceares gemyne dyrnne dream."_

_Heart-cares remember, and hidden __joy._

_"__Thole thu ond leofa__…__"_

_Suffer, and live._

He could feel the power of the ritual, contained and channeled by the containment circle, whipping around them and through them as it was released. There was a sound/feeling of something snapping or breaking, and he could see, for a moment, his brother's face twisted in agony. Then his vision was swept away in the shockwave of some new spell he hadn't initiated. It was coming from Dean, and he had just enough time to recognize it as some sort of goddamned mystic tripwire before Dean stabbed him with his own knife.

Poetic justice, maybe. The knife did technically belong to Dean.

* * *

Charity was standing in the stiff breeze, guzzling a Red Bull, when she watched her one-night stand flee the scene with bloody hands. The Impala growled sweetly and took off in a gravelly cloud of dust that smelled of isolation and rust and abandonment. As soon as the vehicle reached the highway, she bolted for the foundry, smashing down metal stairs and crunching debris with her boots as she raced through the dimly lit metal graveyard. Her flashlight bounced crazily across the walls and floor, splashing her retinas with ugly glances of neglect. She slid to a stop at the threshold of what she thought of as The Room, the only piece of the industrial ruin that mattered, and found Sam adding a fresh coat of blood to the concrete floor. She called his name to no response, put pressure on the gushing wound in his abdomen, and made some swift calculations.

"Son of a shitfucking-"

She cut off sharply, conserving the breath she would need, tied Sam's shirt tightly around the wound to keep him from bleeding to death and pulled him over her shoulder with great effort. On a good day, she could bench Sam's weight, but that was _benching_. Carrying was something altogether different, but she managed. She pulled five different muscles and wrenched her back, but she managed.

"Red Bull does give you wings," she panted as she laid him in her rustbucket Cavalier and took off in a second tornado of dust. Red Bull, adrenaline, whatever. She redlined the tiny sedan all the way to the hospital and collapsed in a plastic chair as soon as Sam disappeared into the ER. Her arms and legs felt like they were vibrating apart and she kept seeing shadowy black flashes in her peripheral vision. Nobody needed to tell her to let the professionals do their jobs. She dodged the paperwork by insisting that she didn't know who she'd brought in and fell asleep sitting up.

The dreams that greeted her were of blood and glittering eyes.

* * *

He's running. Asphalt disappearing beneath chrome, an endless ribbon leading into nowhere. Only the vaguest notion of what (or whom) he's running from, but the inchoate, instinctual impulse is enough. Something's wrong. The job went south.

He'd had him. The ritual had changed something inside him, shifted the hallways of his mind (again), but his arms had been free and he hadn't hesitated on the first thrust. It was only when he pulled the knife back for a more immediately fatal cut that his arm seemed to catch on the other's eyes. He remembered them well, having looked into them or suffered their gaze on a daily basis as long as he could remember. He knew their color and size, knew the habits of the creature to whom they belonged.

But as he lay there with one bloody fist poised to douse their light, something tugged at him, a memory of a memory, something he'd forgotten. He'd been able to read those eyes once. He remembered that. He didn't remember how to read them and their expression was now a mystery to him, but he recalled a time when subtle muscle contractions in his brother's face had told him important things, or things that had seemed important at the time.

There's something missing inside him, he decides. A jagged hole where a part of him has been ripped free. It makes him suddenly and violently angry. Anger at such a violation is something he can feel and he lets the emotion wash through him. It doesn't fill the vacancy – nothing can do that – but it pushes hard against the wound, cauterizes it. They reached inside him and fucked with him, rearranged his soul for purposes of their own. He's already killed the woman, but the boy (_Sammy_ – whose name used to mean something) is probably not dead. Yet.

He remembers the cold concrete, the metal on his wrists. Remembers being slammed to the floor. The searing bite of the knife in his back. The taste of his own blood in his mouth. Hot anger flares from cold detachment. He relishes the irrationality of it: something beyond the indifferent calculus of the hunt. He remembers how to hurt, and how to strike back, and that's something. Not everything, not the missing piece of himself, but it's something.

He skids to a stop and reverses direction, his blood burning hot as the rubber on the Impala's tires.

* * *

It was night, and Sam was drowsing on a gentle sea of painkillers when he saw his brother's eyes in the darkness. Even after he registered the sharp, smooth blade against his throat, his senses were some time in convincing his brain that he was neither dreaming nor hallucinating. He stared while adrenaline vied for control of his nervous system, and Dean stared back. The knife began to tremble; Sam felt it bite ever so shallowly into the skin above his collarbone.

Then the knife and the eyes disappeared, and he heard someone retching.

The dim tunnel of his vision expanded, and he starting taking in his surroundings. Hospital whites painted grey and black by the moonlight. Vertical shades on the large window to his left, half-open and casting stripes of shadow on the pale floor. A wide door leading to an empty hallway, dim and third-shift quiet. And Dean. Standing in the bathroom doorway, leaning against the jamb. He looked pale, and unsteady on his feet. When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse whisper that carried easily in the small room.

"What did you do to me?"

Sam had thought he'd be relieved to see any expression on his brother's face, any indication that the ritual had brought him back to himself. But he looked in Dean's eyes and felt like an accomplice in the violation that had caused the desperate, confused despair he saw there. He tried to push through the chemical and emotional clouds that obscured his thinking, tried to find the right words and string them together.

"Dean, I'm sorry." His throat felt like it was clogged with broken glass. "She fucked with your head, man. I thought, if I could reverse the ritual..."

He trailed off in the face of the obvious discrepancy between planning and reality. His brother slid slowly down the wall, as if he hadn't really expected an answer – a _reason_ – to solve anything. He sat there. Just…stopped. His knife, lying in one limp hand, reflected a low strip of moonlight, eerily matching the faint phosphorescence in his eyes. A few small, still moments passed before he spoke.

"I came here to kill you."

Sam swallowed. "But you didn't."

"Wanted to."

The words came with a breathy exhalation, an echo of a fierce desire. Sam groped for a response, but his tongue felt thick and slow and clumsy. He didn't know how to tell his brother that was okay, wasn't sure Dean wanted to hear it or that he was even capable of saying it. Just wasn't sure.

"I was…angry," Dean continued flatly. He drew his knees up to his chest and crossed his arms over them. "I was so fucking pissed. Wanted to so bad. Wanted to cut you 'til-"

Sam hadn't realized he'd stopped breathing until Dean slipped abruptly into silence and he let out a long, painful breath. He knew that his Dean – the real Dean – couldn't want something like that. He knew it was impossible. But he was still afraid. Still overtaken with a personal sort of terror that went beyond the sharp pull where the knife had slipped into his flesh. He had to force himself to disbelieve, had to remind himself that Dean needed him to not fuck this up.

"But you stopped," Sam said, somewhat surprised by how calm his own voice sounded. Maybe it was the drugs.

"Couldn't tell you why."

"I'm your brother, Dean."

"I know. I remember…things. I just don't-" Confusion settled over his blank face as he struggled for words. "It doesn't _mean_ anything."

"It does mean something," Sam replied gently. "Just…stay, okay? Stay, and we'll figure this out. I promise."

Dean turned to face him, and Sam kept his eyes on his brother, willing him to be as stubborn as he'd always been, not to give up this time. Because Sam couldn't bear it if Dean ever stopped fighting.

Dean didn't answer him, just turned back to the wall. But he didn't leave, either. He sat there while Sam caught a slow boat to Darvocet-induced slumber. The dark image of his brother's hunched form followed him into his dreams.

* * *

When Charity walked into Sam's room the next morning, she started at the sight of Dean slumped against the opposite wall. Sam was awake, but she didn't get the impression that she'd walked in on anything. The boys just stood there (or, in Sam's case, sat there) in silence.

"Hey, Charity," Sam said. She didn't look at him. Dean hadn't moved, hadn't reacted at all to her presence, but she still didn't move any further into the room. "It's okay. Dean's…we, uh, talked."

"Was that before or after he stabbed you?" she asked, turning to Sam and finding a pale, hollowed version of the guy she'd blindly trusted. It was hard to feel threatened by him now.

"Um. After."

She turned back to Dean, eyeing him warily. He returned the look with customary indifference, but there was much more behind that carefully blank look. Something had changed: darkness filling the empty spaces. It frightened her and she recoiled.

She was taken suddenly by a deep memory: a hot summer, and the yellow-painted kitchen of her childhood home. Her mother, sweating as she spread peanut butter on bread, telling Charity that a good man could be as dangerous as a lousy one, in his own way. And she'd taken her sandwich, set it next to her milk and thought of her father, whoever he was, and said nothing. Nothing, until her mother died without answering the unspoken question and she was left with the empty house and the silence.

She looked at Dean and saw also Dean-that-was, the Dean of her memory. The contrast between present and past was sharp and cutting, and made her think of her mother's words. When she finally came back to herself, she realized that Sam had been asking her something.

"What?"

"I asked if you could, you know, read him for me?"

Charity chewed her lip anxiously, looking from one broken brother to the other. That foreign impulse was sweeping over her again in hot waves: _SaveSamSaveSamSaveSam…_ She could hear her mother's voice. _Sometimes a good man is more trouble than a lousy one._ And she understood, finally, what her mother had meant.

She backed away, shaking her head and trembling.

"I'm sorry…"

She fled the hospital and didn't look back.


	6. Chapter 6

The third time Dean tries to kill his brother, it feels less like a decision and more like a reflex.

He's cleaning an assortment of weapons, keeping his hands busy with rods and brushes. He wipes down the actions of his carry pistols every day, but the others haven't been taken apart since Dean and Sam stopped in Clarksville with nothing to do and not enough daylight to hit the next town. That was when he would have listened to Joe Walsh and argued with Sam for the hell of it. This time he is silent and so is the room. His brother, a prescription bottle on the table beside him, is asleep on the other bed. Three days out AMA and fucking proud of it, he breathes with deep, convalescent breaths. Dean listens to them, trying to remember what they mean.

There's nothing.

As he slips the slide of the 226 off the rails, he wonders how long he'll last with his insides ripped out and scrapped. He can drive a car and fire a gun, put together a pattern of mysterious deaths or burn a spirit's bones to ash, but it's all unsupported rote. Habits belonging to a dead man. Not near enough to feed living flesh and blood. He finishes the takedown with familiar motions, brushes away the dirt, wipes down every piece and oils every surface. Snaps everything back in place and shoves the magazine in. Racks the slide to chamber a round.

Picks a target on his brother's chest and fires.

The action doesn't exactly surprise him, but he doesn't plan on doing it either. He isn't thinking beyond the aiming and the firing. He doesn't know what he'll do when the bullets hit. Will a dead Sam finally fill him? Give back the true memory of the life he's just destroyed? Or will he simply walk out, take the guns and the Impala, and not look back?

Doesn't matter, because Sam is somehow, miraculously, launching himself at the floor in the instant before the shots are fired. His eyes are snapping open: wide, lucid, instantly awake. He spends no time assessing the situation, doesn't even look at Dean. His reaction time is zero. It is as if the jump to the floor is a continuation of some motion he has been performing in a dream.

As if he's been warned.

Dean has never been one to stand around wondering what to do, and his run-in with Psycho Bitch hasn't changed that. He quickly begins gathering up the weapons and cleaning supplies, while Sam lies on the floor cursing through gritted teeth. By the time their stuff is in the car, his brother has managed to sit up against the bed. His shirt is dark where he's popped a few stitches and his face shows a thin sheen of sweat.

"What the fuck, Dean?" he pants.

Even if he wanted to answer - and a part of him, lost in the corridors of his mind, does - he couldn't begin to explain himself. It is as much a mystery to him as it is to Sam.

"Cops'll be here," he says, pulling Sam to his feet. "Let's go."

* * *

It wasn't a dream. "Nightmare" didn't begin to fucking cover it. When it released her, Charity launched herself out of bed, limbs flailing and clumsy. She felt like she was moving someone else's arms and legs, some other body newly released from the paralysis of the vision. She struggled to remember who she was, where she was, but her head was rimed in emptiness and agony. She grabbed for handholds as she stumbled across the room, missed, and crumpled to her hands and knees, shaking and panting with the force of what she had seen.

She'd known she was only buying time against the inevitable. She'd spent the last few days trying to gather her strength, but it seemed pointless now. There was nothing she could do to prepare, no comfort she could take with her that would make this desert any easier to cross. Dean was going to rip her apart one way or another. They were connected, now. She could face this, or she could wait for the blackness to pull her in with dark heat, and need, and that torturous hollowness.

She staggered to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She tried not to see Dean when she looked in the mirror, but he was there. He was always there. When she closed her eyes, she could hear that same refrain: _save Sam_.

"Why is this happening?" she rasped at her reflection. _Why me? Isn't there anyone else?_

There was no answer, of course. And what would that change? She would bend in this wind, or she would break.

* * *

Sam was alert and sitting up when Charity entered the motel room, but his face was pale and haggard. She tried not to look back at Dean, who was closing the door behind her.

"Maybe you should go back to the hospital," she said as she approached the bed.

"I can take care of myself," Sam replied firmly. She swallowed, and tried not to inch away when Dean stepped up next to her, face casually blank as he looked on. It was hard to reconcile him with the man who had smiled at her, kissed her, fucked her, made her scream. She wanted to scream now, for entirely different reasons. "Besides, we can't go back there."

"Yeah, I heard about you guys on the news. Shooting through a motel wall, that was fucking brilliant. Y'know, you get more points if you kill innocent bystanders."

"That was a mistake," Sam said, his voice hitching slightly at Charity's no-shit expression. "Dean's not, uh, handling weapons anymore."

"That's comforting."

"You didn't hear about this on the news, though." Clearly a statement, not a question. Charity frowned at the change of subject, and stared at him a long time before answering.

"I sort of had a dream."

"So did I. Except it wasn't a dream. You knew what was going to happen, and you stopped it."

"Maybe," she said slowly. "It's not like I had any control over what happened."

"But you have control now."

"I don't know what you think I can do," she lied.

"You're connected. She used your hair as a ritual object." Sam's voice took an inward turn, as if he were thinking out loud, talking for his own benefit as much as hers. Which was good, because she had no clue what the fuck he was going on about. "There are a lot of rites that recognize the symbolism of sexual unions. She used that symbolism twice, to make sure she could get in deep enough. That kind of thing doesn't go away easy. The link is obviously still active. Maybe you can use it."

"Use it to do what, exactly?"

"Help my brother."

The same arguments that had driven her from the hospital pushed at her now: _not my problem, not my fault_. But the wreckage of Dean's soul was staring her in the face, demanding justice. She looked at Sam, barely strong enough to make it to the bathroom five feet away. Pale, a little high on painkillers. Desperate. Grieving for one not dead.

_Save Sam._

"Godfuckingdammit," she said.

She didn't see Sam's reaction because she looked to Dean, and he pulled her into the empty halls behind his eyes, the Spartan headspace where everything that didn't have a deadly purpose had been removed. She felt burning cold, and then…

…_she's back in the dream. She's sinking into the forgetful waters, drifting in currents that go nowhere._

_But there is fire in the water. She's running, and there is fire. Smoke burns her lungs. She has her orders. She has to get out. _Don't look back. _She's carrying something (someone) and she has to get OUT._

_She stands on a threshold, heat licking at her back. There is a woman standing in the way. Her look is wild, and fevered with madness. _They must all die_, the woman says without speaking. Her eyes are endless mirrors, and the past behind them is bloody, littered with corpses. One of them has the same blue eyes as the killer. _The yellow demon has touched them_, her silence says_, they must all die: sisters and brothers, daughters, sons - all of them_. The woman is a wall of terrible sorrow, of pain and violent anger, but the flailing bundle pushes against Charity's chest, crying out with helpless need, and the fire is burning, driving at her back, driving her into the arms of the kinslayer._

Charity opened her eyes and found the world not where she left it. Sam was next to her, addressing the floor. She struggled to sit up and make sense of things, but her muscles had liquefied somewhere between standing and sprawling on the floor. She settled for rolling to the side and peering blearily at Sam. He was sweating and trembling with the effort of his movement, but his voice was steady as he called for his brother.

Dean, lying bonelessly on the thin motel carpet, did not answer. He breathed shallowly. Even his eyes were still beneath the lids.

"What happened?" Sam asked when he noticed Charity stirring.

She blinked a few times, tried to formulate a response, something along the lines of, _I'm fine, thanks for asking, asshole._ Nothing came consciously, but her mouth started forming senseless words of its own accord. "He woke up," she heard herself say. "Just a little."

Sam didn't have to voice his incredulity. Charity mirrored his expression as she levered herself into a sitting position.

"I don't know, man. I saw...whatever Bitch Lady did, it was like a river, right? She's drowning him, the part of him that cares about anything, the fire..." She paused, because she didn't know how to explain what she had seen when she'd first looked at him. "The fire is everything. It's like a...memory or something. And when I looked at him and saw it, he remembered it too. It pushed back a little of what she did."

"What..." Sam's voice was a quiet rasp in the otherwise silent room. "What fire? What memory?"

"There was a house on fire, and I…_Dean _was running, carrying something. A kid."

Sam's head snapped up at her words and she fell silent under the force of his gaze. For a moment, he looked as though he would say something, but he just turned away again, confused and clearly distressed.

"Does that mean something to you?" she asked. When Sam answered with a pensive frown, she added, "Come on, we're past privacy here."

"When we were kids," Sam replied, after a long pause. "There was a fire, and Dean sort of…carried me out."

"Who's the yellow demon?" she asked, trying to sort through the symbolic and the literal. She wasn't prepared for the change that came over Sam. Like blast doors slamming shut.

"What about it?"

"She said something about a yellow demon, about killing the ones he'd touched. That mean something to you?"

Sam's averted, shuttered expression did not change.

Charity bit her lip in irritation and got up to leave, her limbs still wobbly, but doing their jobs. "Fine. Whatever. Good fucking luck."

"Wait," Sam said as she reached the door. "Just…please. What exactly did she say?"

She stopped, and closed her eyes, but did not turn around.

"She said that everyone the yellow demon touched had to die. There were bodies. She's killed before. I think…I think she killed her sister. I've done all I can. I'm sorry, Sam."

She wrenched the door open, fearing more words, more questions to tug her back by her sense of duty. But Sam was quiet, and she made it outside where no demands would be made on her, and the darkness hid nothing to frighten her. She made it to her car, but didn't get in. She told herself that she'd done all she could reasonably be expected to do. She told herself that Sam was hiding things from her for scary reasons, that she was getting involved in something really weird and dangerous, and that running was the smartest thing she could do.

She told herself those things, but she couldn't leave.

* * *

He thinks he is dreaming.

He thinks this because the scene is constantly shifting, and life doesn't have scenes - just stuff, and places. Then there's the dream-drug, the indifference that softens and blurs the edges that draw blood in the waking world. What he sees, he sees from a distance. Some part of him is relieved by this, though he doesn't know why. Hasn't it always been like this? Won't it always be? He is aware of time passing like a great, slow-moving river. It washes over him with steady, soft currents, with no end and no beginning. The Mississippi of the fucking universe. Straight out of _Buddhism for Dummies_. Time is a river, and life is a journey, interrupted only by rest stops with dim lighting and no TP.

The locations are all familiar. Bring-your-own-soap, thirty-dollar motels. Bars with neon PBR signs and no windows. Graveyards. The woods at night. He plays pool or drinks beer. Stalks through shadows with a gun in his hand. Always goes back to her place, not his. Digs and burns, digs and burns, in an endless cycle of death and more permanent death.

The one person (_who is it?_) that should be with him is absent, but there are others. A fuckable chick with leaves in her hair: she plays nine-ball against him and wins. An old man with an eye patch: he stares from the counter of a greasy spoon, silent like he knows more than he should. Twin brothers with streams of hippie-long hair: they race their bikes against the Impala, eating up the highway with a roar until there's nothing left but sky. Another chick, this time with roses: she refuses to leave with him, but smiles invitingly all the while.

He feels their eyes on him everywhere, while the tape of his life keeps playing itself out: fighting and fear and close calls and shore leave. He knows the words and the rhythms, but he knows them like they belong to someone else. A movie he's memorized, or a song he knows by heart. It doesn't feel like _his _life.

Scene. The police station is dark, and the front desk is hard against his back. The silver-eyed woman is on top of him, and he remembers this part. She's using tongue, hands, hips, and soon it will be her whole body. But something happened didn't it? Something went wrong. What was it? It's so hard to think with her there, seeping into him. Her lips aren't moving, but he thinks he can hear her talking, cajoling.

The flames burn some of the haze from his mind. The wall is sheathed with them by the time he notices. This isn't how it happened. He tries to get up and run, but the woman on top of him holds him down like she wants to watch him burn. _It's nothing_, she says without saying anything. And he thinks, _She's wrong. The fire's everything._

Figures emerge from the approaching flames. He feels the furnace heat and the smoke, but his eyes are clear. He sees the pool-player, the old man, the two boys, the cocktease. And there are others, looking like more than they are: just people in ordinary clothes, but they aren't really people. He thinks that maybe he's having a fucking religious experience, except his gods are holding assault rifles and handguns and tactical knives. Firelight glints off gunmetal and steel in a solid wall behind him, and he feels the lines of the symbol on his back burning as though _they_ carved them, these half-forgotten pagans. _She takes nothing from us that we don't give, _they seem to say. A redheaded bombshell winks at him.

The witch's nails are digging into his skin like claws. She pulls at him, voicelessly, but the heat drowns her out, and he's hearing his father's voice instead. It's a lecture he was given often, in state after state, hunt after hunt.

_Better to make the wrong decision than no decision, son. The safest place for your bullet is in the other guy's chest. You don't hesitate, you don't go halfway. You do it, or you don't._

It's liking waking up from a dream he didn't realize he was having, and in his sudden awareness, his instincts scream for him to _act. _He pushes against the weight on his chest. Her claws rip at him as they grapple. He shoves her away and stumbles for the door, bursting out onto wet grass. The building that was a police station a moment before is being consumed, casting flickering light out over the deserted street. He kneels on the ground, panting, disoriented. He forgot something. There's something he has to do. Something about the fire.

Then it comes back, like a mountain crashing on top of him. The house. That night. The light reflecting off the Impala's hood as the second floor is consumed. He screams his brother's name, and the world shatters around him.


	7. Chapter 7

The world was the double yellow lines weaving across the small strip of illuminated blacktop in front of his bumper. Nothing else existed. He wouldn't – couldn't – allow it. Not yet.

Miles died behind him. Beyond the reach of city lights, where there were no shops or motels or residences – just empty Texas desert – he pulled to the shoulder and slammed to a stop. He let the engine idle for a few moments before he cut it and climbed numbly from the car.

The darkness here was absolute, but with his augmented vision, he saw the landscape in clear shades of grey. The moon was new and hidden, the endless sky awash in diamond dust. It made the world up there look more real than the dead monochrome that surrounded him. He breathed, his breath slightly fogging the dry, cold air. He breathed, the world expanded again, and the fire tore into him, roiling inside his chest like a live animal. It was catching his memories, breaking them down to ash and rebuilding them, filling dark, cold rooms with light and heat. Everything suddenly, painfully, _meant_.

His mother, no longer just a blonde woman in a white dress, now again as she had been: angels turning their backs, a soft touch and a sweet voice disappearing forever. He was wracked again by a grief that only children know.

His father's pyre before his eyes, tears not just remembered but _felt_: a strength that had deserted him, willingly swallowed, self-betrayed. It was as if it had just happened, the chain of his family broken, the principles they fought for destroyed from within.

Sam, flooding back into him, a tiny bundle of jerky limbs, a duty, a job to do that turned into a labor of love, and of desperation. Sam, the only path he could take, the only clear way, even if it ended in fratricide, in blood and madness that would end all roads.

Sam.

Blood on his hands, on the knife they held. A gun that had never, ever, been pointed at Sam (_never point your gun at something you don't intend to shoot_) lined up for a kill shot. Sam's form framed by three-dot sights. He'd pulled the trigger. He'd actually pulled the fucking trigger.

He puked again, as he had in the hospital, only this time he knew why. He heaved his guts out on the dusty ground. It was hot under his knees, still bleeding heat into the air. His head dipped, and he fought to catch his breath. When he looked up, he saw her. She was standing a stone's throw from the berm: a modern witch in strappy sandals and a form-fitting top that didn't reach her jeans. Her eyes were as blue as the day he'd met her, all her crazy locked up inside.

A pistol appeared in her hand. He looked down, and found that his own hand had drawn a Colt – not _the_ Colt, just his 1911 - he hadn't realized he'd been carrying. The smile that answered his unspoken question was a lover's smile, warm and inviting. He could read her intent, knew where she would point the gun, because she'd already done it. She would keep doing it until the bullets reached Sam. If one method failed, she'd try another: gun, knife, bare hands (_his _hands) until the job was done.

Dean didn't hesitate. He didn't even blink.

* * *

It was the second time he'd seen Dean die, but the first time the gun was in his brother's own hands.

The vision came on him suddenly. No foreplay this time. No pretending to be an incipient headache. The double sight slammed into him at the same time as the blinding pain, and Sam closed his eyes tight to ward off the vertigo of receiving two versions of sensory input at once. When he came out of it, Charity was standing over him, looking concerned, but refraining from actually touching him. In the heat of that interminable moment, she meant nothing to him except what she could do, and he spat orders at her that were laced with pleading. "Help me up" and "Where's your car" and "Faster."

Charity seemed to catch his urgency, because she obeyed without question, loading him into her car and following his terse directions. The Cavalier rattled as it approached sixty on the highway, and skidded noisily when she slammed to a stop after spotting the chrome of the Impala's bumper reflecting the light of her headlamps. Sam was out almost before they stopped, staggering out into the night, clutching the stitches across his abdomen and calling for his brother. Twenty yards from the road, he found him: a hunched silhouette blocking the light of the stars that hovered over the distant horizon.

Something clinked on the ground as he moved forward, and he paused to look down and observe the casings strewn about, the discarded pistol with its slide locked back, empty. The blood soaking the thirsty ground. Everything was painted with the red of the Cavalier's brake lights, but he was sure it was blood. He moved for his brother, hiding panic in movement and action and _what next_. Dean's face appeared out of the darkness, coated in the same red-on-red, his eyes silver in the dark and naked with desperation that propelled Sam forward, looking for its source. But Dean retreated as Sam advanced, his movements strong, if jerky, and betraying none of the weakness of the walking wounded. Sam, his insides held together with surgeon's thread, was certainly in no position to push the issue, and quickly pulled himself to a halt.

"Dean, Jesus…"

"Sammy," Dean replied, his voice hoarse and pitched low. "You gotta get outta here."

Something sailed through the air towards Sam, and he snapped out a hand to catch it: the keys to the Impala.

"Pick a direction and shag ass," Dean continued. "Anywhere that's not here. You see me again, shoot and keep runnin'."

Sam hesitated, confused and reeling from unused adrenaline. The vision was still hanging in the future…

He looked again at the shells on the ground, remembered the way Dean's body had jerked with the impact of the bullets when Charity shot him, and the way he'd gotten up like nothing happened.

"Oh,_fuck_," he whispered, wanting to say more, needing answers, but he was still stuck on the idea of Dean trying to _kill_ himself, and the fact that the witch's magic was the only reason his brother was still alive. Sam felt like he was unraveling.

"She's usin' me to get to you. I'll keep…she'll keep trying to use me to kill you. I can't stop her. I tried." The evidence of the attempt was scattered across the dirt at his brother's feet. "Go, Sam. Hurry."

Sam gaped at him, his mind running in a dozen directions, trying to put the pieces together and figure out what to _do,_ but his brother was in agony, and that made it hard to think about anything except that things had to be really bad if Dean wasn't pretending they were okay.

"What are you, high? I'm not leaving you anywhere."

Dean opened his mouth to protest, but Sam steamrolled over whatever words he would have formed. He was surprised at how steady, how quiet his voice sounded, even as his body trembled with the force behind it.

"It's both of us or neither of us, man. You know that."

"Sam…" His voice was gravelly with annoyance and argument and inarticulate despair.

"If it were me, you wouldn't leave. How can you ask me to?"

"You don't understand," he insisted. "I can't stop her. I'll kill you, Sam."

The words should have chilled him, but Dean was looking at him – really looking at him – for the first time since the whole nightmare started, and he couldn't feel anything but relief that his brother was finally back. That was _Dean _looking out at him through a sheen of barely-controlled tears. The gleam of his irises couldn't change that.

"Dude, we'll figure something out. Now that we know what kind of spell it is-"

"Sam, goddammit-" Dean stopped short, reined himself in. With his eyes closed, he was a dark profile against the sky. "Just go."

Sam let out a little huff of grim amusement, and pulled his Beretta.

"Dean, if I have to shoot you and toss you in the trunk, you're coming with me."

As it turned out, that was exactly what Sam had to do. Well. Charity did most of the heavy lifting.

* * *

"Ow," Dean said when Sam opened the trunk.

"You shouldn't be so stubborn."

Dean scowled and launched himself feet-first onto the pavement, ignoring Sam's outstretched hand. In retrospect, Sam had to admit it wasn't the brightest idea he ever had, trying to haul his brother out of the trunk when he couldn't even support his own weight without leaning on the fender.

"Where's your partner in crime?" Dean asked, casting about for the Cavalier or its driver.

"I sent her home." Sam tossed his brother a wet rag and a clean shirt. Dean set the shirt on the car and began scrubbing his face with the rag. "We can take care of this now, you're…"

"Not quite so homicidal?"

"Yeah."

"You should get inside," he said. "Rest. And lock the door."

Sam just stood there as Dean tossed down the bloody rag and peeled off two shirts, replacing them with the t-shirt Sam had offered. The complex tattoos looked even more sinister in the sodium light, and the razor lines of scar tissue across Dean's back showed in sharp, white contrast. They were different. Not just different spells, but of completely different characters. He filed that information away, to be examined by a brain not quite so exhausted as his was at the moment.

"You need to sleep too, Dean."

"No, actually, I don't. And if you think I'm spendin' the night in the same room as you, you're a bigger dumbfuck than I thought."

Dean tossed his bloody shirts next to the rag and leaned back against the car, eyes anywhere but on Sam. It was as close as he would ever get to conceding the point Sam had been trying to make. But he still worried.

"So you can take off again?"

"I'll be here when you get up. Promise." Throat-clearing. A carefully controlled breath. "Then we'll go back to the foundry."

Sam blinked. "Why the hell would we do that?"

"Because, Sam. If we're doing this, you're gonna take some fucking precautions."

"I'm not chaining you up and leaving you!"

"Then we're not doing this."

"You can't be serious."

Dean just looked at him. He was a little ragged around the edges, and his eyes were the wrong color, but it was _Dean_, deadly calm and humorless. Not a version of his brother that got a lot of play. Certainly no point in arguing with him. But then, Sam sometimes felt he spent his life tilting at windmills, especially where Dean was concerned.

"Look, if you're that concerned about it, we can set something up here. You don't have to-"

"Sam." He said his name like a warning, violence in his tone.

"What's so special about the foundry? We've got cuffs."

"The ones she set up will hold. Nothing else will."

"How do you know?"

"I just know."

Sam gave a defeated sigh. His side was pulsing with regular throbs of pain. His legs felt slightly gelatinous. If he didn't lie down soon, he wouldn't make it on his own.

"Fine. We'll talk about it tomorrow. So you better be around to do the talking."

"I will."

"I'm serious."

"I'll be here, Sam."

The response was short and clipped, but Sam believed it. At least, he thought he did. His head was still pounding from the vision. The risk of Dean slipping away during the night was a very real one; if Dean didn't want to be found, he could disappear off the face of the fucking planet. But Sam was so tired, and Dean was the one person he was supposed to be able to trust. _The knife sliding in, shock and cold and bite. Gunshots flung from a nightmare into the waking world. Dead silver eyes like coins in the darkness. _

Sam walked to the door of the motel room and unlocked it, pausing in the threshold to look back at his brother. Dean was still leaning against the car, eyes on his feet. He looked like a Beckett character, waiting for something that would never come.

It was getting late. Sam started to shiver.

He turned around, shut the door. And, after hearing his name called out in reproach, he locked it and drew the chain.

* * *

It helped to have a locked door between them.

Dean knew it wouldn't stop him; he could easily kick the thing down (something which, judging by the condition of the jamb, several cops or spouses had already done). But doing so would certainly wake Sam, and an awake Sam had a much better chance of defending himself.

As the night wore on, he tried to pretend that he was watching over Sam, standing guard from a strategic position. He didn't exactly sleep these days, and it wasn't as though he had anything better to do. But the ridiculousness of it destroyed the illusion. He was the biggest danger to Sam right now. He tried to pretend, and he choked on his own panic over what might happen if the witch's influence acted on him before he could get to the foundry. He was practically trembling with the need for shackles, for the relief of being unable to harm Sam. Pretty messed up, actually. But when _hadn't_ their lives been fucking twisted?

More than once he considered hotwiring the Impala, but every time it came back to the weariness in Sam's eyes, the stiffness of his movements, the injury that Dean had himself caused. He'd promised. He was terrified of hurting Sam, but he had promised. There'd been a time when that wouldn't have mattered, when Sam's safety would have superseded his happiness. But that was a attitude taken towards children, and Sam was no longer a child. Not tonight. Not since Dad, maybe.

Dean couldn't trust his own judgment, was the thing. He'd tried to end this himself, and had failed. He could only trust Sam, because he was all out of options. That bitch had fucked him up but good. He was holding onto himself by his fingernails, and sometimes he wished it would all just _stop_. He was so goddamned tired.

He pushed his sleeves up and stared at the black ink on his forearms, the intricate symbols he didn't recognize. He could feel them, though. What they meant. Like tiny, sharp claws in his skin, piercing deep into bone and soul. A different kind of shackle. He dropped his hands and stood staring into darkness that wasn't dark - not for him.

He started getting jittery a few hours in. It was the waiting again. Nothing to do, nothing to be done. Stillness that killed with suffocating slowness. He walked a few blocks to the 24/7 Quik Mart by the expressway. The dark streets, perfectly lit to his eyes, reminded him of a _Twilight Zone_ ghost town. He passed a chain-link fence with a badass mutt behind it, some combination of fighting breeds, loyal and vicious. The animal moved towards him as he approached, but stopped without making a sound, and watched without making eye contact. It remained in that attentive, submissive posture until Dean turned onto the side street that ran towards the interstate. Weird dog.

The convenience store was a island of artificial light in the natural darkness. There was a steady trickle of customers passing in and out, holding bags of chips and candy bars and caffeine pills. Truckers and travelers and insomniacs, passing each other in the fluorescent glare. Dean bought a fifth of Jim Beam and two packs of Kentucky's Best, unfiltered. He took a different route back to the motel, telling himself that he wasn't avoiding the dog. But he kind of was. Fucking creepy.

The bourbon didn't last long. Might as well have been drinking water. He had more success with the cigarettes. There was no sedative effect, but he started to relax with the motion from hand to mouth, and the heightened awareness of his breathing. He pulled the smoke in deep and let it out slow, watching it curl up and out into the darkness. When it escaped the dim shine of the streetlight and he could see it in total darkness, it looked like the breath of ghosts.

Dad had made it clear when they were kids that if he ever caught them smoking they'd regret it 'til the day they died. Dean had never been tempted. Smoking, like long hair, was a liability. Lung capacity matters when you're running from (or towards) a psychopathic spirit.

Or when you're watching out for your little brother.

He'd pulled Sam away from the school dumpster once, and punched the kid who'd been handing out the stolen cigs. The idea of telling Dad had never crossed his mind, but he was so _pissed_ at Sam. Wasn't like him to go that far just to fit in. But that had been a difficult year, a new high school every few months and more hunting than ever before. Sam hated it and Dean loved it. At least, he'd thought he had. Lately, it'd been hard to separate the job-worth-doing sentiment from the blood and the death and the sheer sacrifice. They'd lost so much. Everything they'd ever had. There had to be an end to it, somehow. It couldn't go on forever.

The compulsion came just as the sky was hinting at dawn. For the first time, he could separate it from his own will, and he almost sobbed with the relief of it. It was all he could do to stay where he was, to not kick down the door and start in on Sam with his bare hands. He couldn't move, was barely holding himself in place against the foreign tide, smoldering cigarette dropping from a nerveless hand, but at least he was no longer swept up in the spell. It was a sweet agony to be aware, finally, of what was happening to him. Like being torn apart from the inside, but he would never _want_ it like he did in the memories that were nightmares. He had a choice, at least until he reached the end of his endurance.

_Not Sam not Sam not Sam not Sam…_

The earth turned, the sun began to rise, and Dean prayed to a god he didn't believe in that his brother would find a way to kill him.


	8. Chapter 8

Sam opened his eyes.

There was a moment, just a moment, before he remembered where he was or why he was so tired. The quiet, and the familiar sight of indirect sunlight worrying at the cheap blinds, almost had him rolling over, before the emptiness of the room and the events of the past few days settled in his mind. Then he was hauling himself upright, pulling the scattered threads of himself together. The wound in his side throbbed still, as if someone was stabbing him over and over. But there would be no painkillers today. The warning labels on the meds only mentioned heavy machinery, but he was pretty sure they wouldn't mix well with occult research and rituals either.

He did _not _rush outside to check on Dean (_make sure he's still there_). He trusted his brother. And to prove it, he hit the sweet spots and brushed his teeth, even changed his clothes, though he wasn't sure how much cleaner the new ones were. He had to find some calm, some focus. Wouldn't be much help to Dean if he was too strung out to think straight.

As it happened, the fact that he wasn't still groggy and distracted probably saved his life, because Dean came at him clumsily as soon as he stepped outside.

He could tell Dean was fighting it because the smooth grace of his movements, the almost inhuman dexterity, was gone. He fought as though he _hadn't_ been dragged kicking and cursing through some funky-ass ritual, and as if he'd tossed back a few beers for good measure. But he wasn't drunk. Sam, dodging his wild swings and fumbling attempts at grapples, could see that clearly. He was struggling against the pull of the spell, trembling like a wire wound tight enough to snap. Sam didn't say anything ( _what do I say?_), just tried to keep his blood inside his body and all of his bones intact. After a few furious seconds, Dean seemed to pull himself in. Stumbled against the wall and stayed there, eyes closed, head and hands pressed against it as if in supplication.

"Dean." It was a vow, an affirmation, and a question all at once, spoken in a language that had only one word.

His brother's only response was to snap his arm back and pound his fist into the cheap motel siding, over and over, until both the wall and his hand were cracked in multiple places. Blood streamed from shattered knuckles, dripping viscously to the pavement. Sam waited while the wounds closed, blood clotting with unnatural swiftness, skin regenerating before his eyes. Dean stayed there a moment, head still against the wall, eyes closed, then turned abruptly for the car.

"Let's go," he said, face expressionless.

Sam followed.

* * *

It happened again on the way to the foundry, a mad grab in a moving vehicle, Sam forced to use the weapon Dean had insisted he carry in the hand that wasn't steering. The handcuffs, as Dean had predicted, didn't slow him down much, despite the loops of chain Sam had wound between them and the seat assembly. Sam heard the sickening crack of multiple breaking bones and then he was shooting, his Beretta thundering in the enclosed space. Blood splashed across the interior and Sam's ears rang.

He pulled over, thinking what perfectly awesome luck it would be if a cop drove by and saw arterial spray on the windows, because that was so fucking inconspicuous, but it was worse that Dean looked _dead_, and he tried not to believe it, but he was trembling just as badly as he'd been the night before...

_Stop_. He took a deep breath as he wiped the worst of the blood from the windows, let it out slowly as he tossed the paper towels in the back. It was funny how, the worse things were, the easier it was to stay calm. He slipped the cuffs back over Dean's broken hands and tightened them. He'd learned that long ago, the first time he'd asked _Why us?_ and Dean had said _Because, Sammy. There's no one else._ When you had to do something, you had to do it, no matter how impossibly hard it seemed.

He was barely off the shoulder when Dean drew a shuddering breath and opened his eyes. He wondered what that must be like, waking up from death. But he would never ask. He didn't voice so many questions now as he used to. Childhood was over. Sometimes he wondered if he'd ever had one.

The chain rattled softly as Dean shifted out of a boneless sprawl to lean listlessly against the window. Sam drove, and there was no sound except for the sickening crack of bone as Dean's hands healed, and the hum of the Impala's tires on the too-long highway.

Sam drove, and didn't say anything. Didn't tell Dean that everything was going to be okay, that he wouldn't give up on him. Didn't say he was terrified of losing his brother, that he would do anything to keep him. Talking was Sam's thing, not Dean's. The silence was a gift, the only thing he had to give.

At least until he figured out how to remove that whoring bitch's spell.

Sam already had reservations about the lock-Dean-up-and-throw-away-the-key part of this particular plan, but his uneasiness exploded into stubborn denial when he saw his brother visibly shudder when he snapped the cuffs into place.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothin'."

"Dean, for once in your life, tell the fucking truth."

He seemed taken aback by Sam's tone, but still no answer was forthcoming, like he couldn't find the words, and Sam started thinking about PTSD and how _stupid_ this entire idea was. He grabbed his brother's wrist and moved to unlock the bindings, but Dean swept his hand away with what seemed like a tremendous effort.

"She laid down some kinda mojo here, Sam. It's safe. I can't slip it. Just go...do what you gotta do."

"Dean." He knelt next to him, trying to read Dean's face, but his brother wouldn't look him in the eye. "Whatever spell she used, that might be a clue. Can you tell me anything else about it? Do you know how she did it?"

Slowly, Dean's silver eyes rose to Sam's, briefly, and then continued up, to focus on the dark ceiling. There was little expression on his face, but that careful blankness always spoke volumes where Dean was concerned, and Sam was struck by how small his brother looked, gazing upward at the bars of his cage.

"It just feels like...walls. She drew it up there. In blood."

Sam followed his sight-line, but saw nothing. Except that here, in this room, the decades of grime had been scrubbed clean. And repainted in blood?

"Can you see what it looks like?"

A mute nod.

"Can you draw it?"

Another affirmative.

Sam took another look around the room, thinking. It made sense. So far, she'd used rituals that relied on the elemental connections between living things, physical components and organic spellforms. A containment circle could be drawn in anything: paint, ink, chalk, sand, any material that could be used to trace the appropriate lines. But the most powerful circles were drawn in blood, which could be present even if it wasn't visible.

"I'll get you some paper. You got your phone, right? Do you need, like...food?"

"I'll be fine."

"Okay."

There was more he wanted to say. Wanted to scream. He wanted to shake Dean until he agreed that they would fight this, that it was worth fighting, that they could figure something out. He wanted to find the right words to banish the bleak acceptance from his brother's eyes, the tense curl in his shoulders. But he knew it wouldn't do any good. "I'll be back," was all he said.

Dean's only response was to rock back into a sitting position, chained arms draped over knees as he stared resolutely into the dark.

* * *

Dean was beginning to understand devil's traps from the demon's perspective.

The first time he'd woken up in the room, he had not noticed anything peculiar about it (aside from the unlawful imprisonment, but that wasn't anything new). The second time, after the witch was dead, his mind had been like a sharp edge, frictionless and impervious. Now, though, now he could feel the electric pressure of the hidden symbol that took up most of the room, enclosing a small space around the shackles in the center. Without the meaning of his memories, with only the most practical and vicious considerations entering his mind, that circle had been an obstacle to wait out, nothing more. Now he could feel it, like he felt the ink in his arms and the scars on his back. It was more than a simple barrier, now. Every intricate line was an exquisite wrongness that delved deep inside him and ate away like icy claws or drips of acid. It was the emptiness of the road, the horrors of the job, the loss of good people to a darkness that was always hungry. It was flames above his brother's crib, his father's body on the hospital floor.

It wasn't long before he started seeing the witch, as he'd seen her by the side of the road. All in his head, but real just the same. Oh, she was real. His insides were spilling out all around him, being torn apart by the power of those symbols, and she was there, worming her way around defenses he was too tired to uphold. It was only a matter of time.

He couldn't win. It didn't matter. If he stayed, he'd go batshit insane. If he persuaded Sam to let him go...well, that wasn't an acceptable alternative. He needed a way to erase both options, some way out.

He thought longingly of his Colt.

It might have been hours or days before Sam returned, haggard and stumbling just a little. He almost asked what Sam had found out about the symbol he had sketched for him, but Dean could read the lack of answers in his face, what might as well have been an eternity spent poring over every relevant manuscript he could find. Dean knew before Sam tried to talk (and failed) that he had found nothing. The lost look reminded him of the Sam he'd half-raised, the Sam who needed his brother's reassurance, and even asked for it from time to time. Now, as so many times before, he had no more assurances to give. Childhood didn't last long in their world. You grew up or you didn't.

Then Sam pulled something from his pocket that clinked and briefly reflected the faint light that had tumbled through the door upon his entrance.

Keys.

"No, Sam." Horror swept his nervous system in a wave of lightening. "Don't."

"We have to go. I can't work here. I need resources, libraries...this is too big to be doing over the phone-"

"Sam, don't you dare." Panic was following closely on its brother's heels. His resistance was eroding already. If Sam released him he might lose himself entirely. He was inexplicably certain of that.

"I can't just leave you here. Especially not-" He stopped short of mentioning what Dean had made clear was forbidden territory. There had been no hiding his initial reaction when the invisible trap closed in on him, but he would be damned if he'd let Sam's judgment be clouded by the agony it was causing. "We have to go. I can't find an answer here."

"That's because there isn't one. You're coming at this backwards. You should be looking for a weakness, not a way to undo it."

Sam got very still at those words, and Dean read the answer in his silence.

"You _have_ found a way through. Haven't you?"

"We need a way to reverse what she did, to remove her influence-"

"Sam, you need to kill me. That's the only way to solve this problem. If you've found a way, you better use it."

Sam grew visibly paler at that. "No. I'm not..."

"I'm not asking for anything I didn't promise you," he replied, feeling shitty for the shock of hurt that crossed his brother's face, but goddammit, he deserved something back for all he'd given.

"That's different."

"No. It's not..."

There were a thousand things he wanted to say, planned on saying. He wanted to tell Sam that he wasn't trying to be a martyr, or a hero. Wanted to explain to him how things are like that sometimes, that it hurts so much you don't want to go on. Wanted to tell him there was nothing left, that you had to admit when you were beat. Wanted to tell him that he was asking this for himself, and no one else. But only two words actually made it past the fear and the pain and the desperation that choked his throat.

"Sammy, please..."

But it was a replay of that scene by the river, when he had pleaded with his brother for something that was just for him, when he had asked for time, for the sands in the hourglass to slow. An empty motel room, that was his answer. And now, the story was the same: sympathy and denial, because Sam refused to yield. And to Dean, the wetness on his face felt like blood, everything he ever was bleeding out, draining him, pulling his soul apart until he blew into pieces in the wind as Sam turned and left.

* * *

"Where did you get these?"

Dr. Henry Pangalo's face had gone carefully smooth when he realized what he was looking at. Sam had thought about his answer before he ever showed up at the man's office.

"At my job," he replied honestly, though privately, the idea of representing himself as though he had a job made him laugh a little.

"Am I going to get anything more specific than that?"

"Probably not."

The man sighed and rolled back in the cheap desk chair. Sam resisted the urge to fidget in the thinly cushioned seat he occupied in front of the desk. There really wasn't enough room for his legs. Even normal-sized chairs sometimes made him feel like he'd wandered into an elementary school, with little child-sized everything and no place for seven-foot-tall giants. It was icing on the cake of his stress, and he would have taken the guy by the throat and throttled the information out of him if he'd thought it would work.

"I just need some information," Sam continued, when the professor's thoughtful silence continued. "I was told that you were the person to talk to. I'll pay any consulting fee you want." Abusing the cash advance was a fine art that Sam had never wanted to learn, but he _did_ learn it, and he had no compunctions about using it. Especially not when it was Dean's life at stake.

"I don't need your money." And right there, from the tone in his voice, Sam knew he'd made a mistake mentioning it, that he'd hurt his credibility by implying that he was in the business of buying and selling the kind of information that could save lives or take them. "I need assurances. I'm not sure you're in a position to provide those. I suppose you're going to tell me this is just an academic interest?"

"No," Sam said, and he couldn't tell if he'd scored any points with that admission. He chose his next words carefully, treading the line between too much information and too little. "Someone else got this ball rolling. I just want to finish it."

The professor considered this a moment, looking out the small window in the side wall of his temporary office, as if the post-Katrina construction and light student traffic would tell him whether Sam could be trusted. People who dealt in occult matters were understandably suspicious, especially if they wanted to remain alive and breathing.

"I'll need a name," he said finally, and looked back, into Sam's eyes. "You got a reference?"

"Dr. Paterson-"

"Yes, yes," the professor replied, raising a hand as though he'd heard it all before. "He called to say you were coming. But he doesn't know you. Not really."

"That didn't stop him from helping," Sam said, somewhat heatedly.

"He's never been a particularly good judge of character."

Sam kept his face as blank as possible, furiously trying to think of someone he knew whose name would mean something to this man. But no one actually _knew _him, except by reputation. Hell, Sam didn't even know if _he _could trust _him._ But he had to give him something, so he gave up the only name that still held some mysteries for him.

"Winchester."

The word had an immediate effect, though whether it was good or bad, Sam couldn't tell, but knowing Dad...

"What's your connection to Dean?"

It occurred to Sam, then, that Dean was on the FBI's Most Wanted list (and pissed off that they weren't ranked, not that he had much hope of passing up Osama anyway), and that it might not be such a good idea to be flashing the name around. And since when did a member of their loosely linked and distrustful community jump to Dean rather than John?

"Well?" the professor insisted.

He couldn't think of way to turn it around into a useful lie, so he told the truth, and it felt like gravel in his throat, like the dust of the highway and the sharp burn of gunpowder, fighting so hard and losing so much.

"He's my brother."

The man looked like he was reading Sam's face, and maybe he was, because Sam wasn't sure how well he was holding things together. But as long he helped, it didn't matter. He just needed information. He just needed to save Dean. Anything else, he'd deal with later.

"He in trouble?"

"Please," Sam replied, counting on the earnestness that he didn't have to fake. "I just need to know whatever you can tell me about these symbols. I promise you I'm not trying to hurt anyone."

The man eyed him again, searching. Then he picked up his phone and dialed, while Sam watched in disbelief. What connection did this man have to his brother?

"He's not answering his phone."

"Try mine," Sam offered. "He's not going to take calls while...while we're in the middle of a job."

Pangalo eyed him suspiciously as he accepted the proffered phone. He didn't use the phonebook, just punched in the numbers, and this time Dean picked up.

"Dean, it's Henry. Henry Pangalo. I...you don't sound well." A pause. "There is a young man sitting across from me who claims to be your brother...I see." He listened for a few moments and then removed his glasses, rubbing his face with his hand as if he could scrub the stress from it. "No. I will do everything in my power to see this undone. You have my word."

He was up and moving before he'd finished hanging up the phone and tossing it back to Sam.

"I would have to do some extensive work with these to be sure of anything, but there's no time for that," he explained. Sam rose and followed him as he practically sprinted out of his office and down the hall. "We can work in the reading room at Schlotman – I'll need materials from the special collections there."

* * *

They spent several hours going over possible sources, the connections between the different parts of the rituals, how they would interact, how they could be changed. The graduate students working the desk at the library gave them odd looks from time to time, but the professor ignored them to concentrate on the puzzle spread before them. Sam felt a blackness overtaking him as they arrived closer and closer to nothing.

"There has to be a way to remove it. Some kind of ritual against charm or domination..."

"For something less permanent, that might work. But this..." He shook his head. "It's a hell of a _geis. _I've never seen anything like it. She actually anticipated the changes you would make to this." He pointed at the sketch of the symbol that had been carved into Dean's back. "She had to bastardize it to get in, but once she did that, the _geis _operates 's a conglomeration of elements from many mystical traditions, all bent toward the same end and using the Anglo-Saxon ritual as a entry point. This combination was designed with a specific subject in mind, and trying to remove it would be like...trying to tear out a person's circulatory system. It's everywhere, embedded in the object of the spell. There's no way to separate them without killing the person."

_Without killing Dean_, he didn't say.

Sam thought of the old stories about fairies and witches that would "ride" human victims to exhaustion and death. If there was any truth to those myths, these symbols were part of it, images of domination and lines of control. The point of connection between the subject of the spell and the caster was even reminiscent of reins. And then there were the stories of Gaelic heroes who were destroyed by such magics, torn apart by one _geis _commanding them to do something forbidden by another.

"I don't understand how this could work without constant attention from the caster," Sam said finally.

"Well, a _geis _isn't like other magics. It can run itself. Like a computer program. Completely self-contained. As long as the task your trying to accomplish can be communicated in one or two simple commands."

"And you're sure that's what this is?" Sam figured _kill your brother_ was about as simple a directive as one could ask for.

"Well, like I said, this is Frankenstein's monster here, but yeah. At its core, it's a _geis._"

Sam was very still while he thought about this.

"So what you're saying is...we don't have to remove it entirely. I mean, if the whole thing depends on one command, then all we have to do is change that command. Could you-" His mouth was suddenly very dry. "Could you break it that way? Just switch control of it to...the subject?"

"I suppose theoretically that's possible."

"Practically?"

"You might run into some problems."

"Such as?"

"These two channelers," he said, pointing in turn to the points of entry and exit, "are high-energy. Folding them in on each other might make the whole system unstable. One person isn't meant to hold two of those at the same time."

"But it might work?"

"It might."

"And if it doesn't, what would happen to the subject?"

"He'd die," Pangalo responded gently. "In all likelihood."

Sam swallowed, then pointed to the sketch Dean had made of the symbols only he could see. "And there's nothing else you can tell me about this?"

A slow shake of the head. Hesitency. Then, "It shares some properties with the Key of Solomon and other Mediterranean circles, but...I only recognize one of these components."

"And?" Sam waited, but the man seemed suddenly uneasy. "What is it?"

"I saw a book once that was purported to be a written record of demonic rituals and spells. I didn't recognize the script and I have my doubts about the source, but...the orthography was...similar to this."

"You're saying..." Sam stopped and shifted his weight, looking to the sketch and back to the professor's face. "You're saying this is demonic spellwork. Not just black magic, but the sort of thing that demons themselves use."

A shrug.

"What is it supposed to contain?"

"I have no idea. And no way of finding out. You don't buy those sorts of books at Barnes and Noble. But...well...demons are evil. Unnatural. Magic works in binaries, so...a containment circle infused with demonic power would logically contain something...good, I guess. Natural and real in a way that demons aren't."

"You can't be...you can't be saying..." Sam stopped. He couldn't continue. It was too ludicrous.

"No." The professor shook his head. "Not necessarily. We think of angels as being the opposite of demons, but there are many supernatural entities that would be fundamentally opposed to demonic energy, and particularly susceptible to it."

"But why Dean? Why would this affect him?"

Pangalo paused, licking his lips before continuing in a hushed but energetic whisper, his hand over the drawing of the Anglo-Saxon spell that the witch had used to gain access to Dean.

"That's the thing: parts of this ritual are...they're _not evil_. Not in the usual sense of the word. They aren't designed to draw their power from the sacrifice of others but from _self_ sacrifice."

Sam thought of the triumph on the witch's dead face.

"You mean people did this to themselves?" he asked incredulously, remembering the scars on Dean's back, the sickening slide of the knife under his hand. "Why? And how could...where does the power come from?"

"From something that's not a demon." Pangalo shrugged. "From the old gods, totemic spirits, the wind, the earth, whatever. Could even be the Christian God, I suppose, although I'd date this ritual before the Gregorian mission."

He had been standing next to Pangalo, looking at the books and papers they'd dumped on the small reading table, and now he sat down in the uncomfortable chair, staring at the worn, gray carpet, trying to think. If the plan had been, as Dean had insisted, to take Sam out, what was the advantage of drawing a containment circle? And how had Dean left it before?

"She locked herself in there with him," he muttered, thinking out loud. "She used the circle to contain it so it could be manipulated, sacrificed herself to power it and the _geis_ at the same time."

"Wait, whoever did this, she used her _own_ life to finish the spell?"

Sam nodded, his throat constricted.

"That would work," Pangalo admitted, and let out an appreciative whistle. "Clever bitch. She ties the _geis _to the second ritual, spells him to kill her, and her willing sacrifice makes both of them permanent."

Sam wasn't listening. He knew enough now to save Dean. To try, anyway. Save him or kill him, but wasn't that always the way things went?

"Thanks," he said, and began gathering up the papers he'd brought. "I won't take up any more of your time."

The professor watched him as he swept his notes into his bag. He was just turning to go when Pangalo spoke his name. Sam stopped and regarded him impatiently.

"I will...pray...for you. And your brother." He smiled somewhat self-consciously. "Good luck."

Sam nodded once, unable to speak. Then he was out the door and heading back to Dean.


	9. Chapter 9

He feels himself breaking, and the moment of fracture will last an eternity.

She is inside him, tearing away everything his brother rebuilt. It's all gone, nothing but pieces left, sharp edges and tiny reflections that are just enough to choke on. His resistance is all he is, and she rips it apart on the blood-etched runes, between a rock and a fucking hard place.

It goes beyond pain, to exist and not exist, to be frozen in the moment of his unmaking. This is fighting to the last, never giving up: the end of all endurance and nothing to show for it. Even as he knows he is upright, walking steadily to a stolen vehicle, he also knows that he is on the ground, surrounded by so much blood that he's swimming in it. He remembers the knife in his back, and Sam twisting it, and goddamn it hurts.

He's traveling, but he's still where he started. There's a car, and an interstate beneath the wheels, but he's in that room, choking on his own blood. She has him fully now, broken apart and each piece in her keeping. He could run to hell's fires and he wouldn't be free of her. The road is made of bloody sacrifice and iron chains, and he knows his brother is at the end of it.

Sammy. Sam. That used to mean something, when he was whole. Now it's just another piece, and there's not even an empty space where it used to be.

* * *

Sam fell asleep over his research, drooling on his contraband photocopies, one hand sprawling over the keyboard like a dead man's last attempt at salvation. The lines of the ritual entered his dreams, and he saw himself drawing them in his blood and in Dean's. He heard himself saying the words, struggling to get the awkward pronunciation right. In his dreams, there were a thousand outcomes, and none of them good. He woke with the certainty that Dean was dead, that he'd killed him, and a few terrifying moments passed before he realized that the image of his brother's staring eyes was not a true memory.

He swiped at his face and then glanced around the motel room that seemed so strange and empty without a second occupant, without even a second bed. It hurt to imagine his life like this, always ordering a single, conking out over his laptop with no one to cover his face in whipped cream or pour beer in his hair. He tried to think of it as temporary, but the specter of his impending failure kept crushing him in waves, and he barely held his resolve.

He grabbed one of the sugared, caffeinated drinks he'd stocked up on and went back to work. He'd already worked out a copy of the ritual the witch had presumably used, isolated the lines he would need to change, and was fine-tuning the incantations. The Latin ones were easy enough, but he was having trouble with the Anglo-Saxon. It was just vaguely reminiscent of modern English, and while the similarities didn't help much in translation, it caused some confusion in the recitation.

He was lingering over the diphthong in _weald_ when someone kicked in the door. His hand went instinctively for his Beretta, but he hesitated when he saw Dean, because something had changed. His brother wasn't fighting it, wasn't fighting anything. Neither was he the cold weapon he'd been before Sam altered the spell for the first time. He was just...empty: terrifyingly not there.

Dean was stepping into the gun and Sam fired before he lost his weapon. He put three slugs into his brother's chest, and felt like his own would explode. Dean staggered, but kept coming. Sam backed up carefully, firing methodically as he went. He emptied the clip, and there was blood everywhere, but Dean was still on his feet, and his eyes were dead.

Sam dropped the gun, certain it was over. Dean had always been just a little faster than him, but now he was inhumanly quick. If they went hand-to-hand, the fight would last about two seconds. And yet, as he frantically dodged and deflected, he felt little conviction behind the blows. They were mechanical, almost lazy. He clipped Sam's jaw a few times and nearly nailed the stab wound once (which almost ended the contest right there), but Sam managed to escape more serious damage. He drove his brother back, grabbed his notes and ran, leaving his semiautomatic behind. Dean didn't give any serious effort to pursuit, and the shattered look on his face wrecked Sam as he fumbled open the Impala's driver-side door. He tossed his things on the passenger seat, papers, books and computer sliding recklessly across the black leather. When he looked back, Dean was approaching at a robotic pace. It was almost mesmerizing.

Sam blinked and forced himself to put the car in gear. He peeled out of the deserted parking lot, his eyes on the rearview mirror until his brother disappeared into distance and darkness.

.

* * *

The concept of urgency no longer has any meaning for him. He lets Sam lengthen his lead and he follows. He knows where he's going even after the Impala is out of sight. He can feel which direction is the right one, like a flash of light in his peripheral vision. She is driving him and he lets her, because he doesn't how to resist, or why, or even that such a thing is possible. He's still bleeding on that floor, still pinned down and drowning in his own blood. The road is there, but it's not there, replaced by cold concrete and the taste of iron. A piece of him there and a piece of him here, a piece then and a piece now. He is both and he is neither.

Sam. Sammy. What does it mean?

* * *

He decided to let Dean come to him.

His brother had been tailing him steadily as he drove through state after state, but as long as Sam kept moving, the distance between them did not decrease. He picked an isolated spot, far from the interstate, from gas stations and shopping malls and motels and park rangers. The roads were barely passable in the best of weather, and snow was starting to dust the treeline of pines. Further up, the mountains were perpetually shrouded. He'd left the car by the side of the road and climbed into cover to begin drawing his circle. He cleared the thin layer of topsoil from a sizable section of the clearing he'd selected. He was pretty sure he had the design memorized, but he set the book up next to him anyway. In the clay layer, he etched the symbols, forming furrows that would hold his blood. Then he flipped open his knife and got to work.

He was feeling lightheaded by the time he finished. Faint ribbons of steam were rising from the ground where the blood was still warm. He sucked down a Coke and started covering the area, layering the soil over the circle until it looked like just another piece of dirt. He had memorized the location of the center, but that was his only way of knowing which spot was the right one, the place Dean had to be for the whole thing to work. He stared at it for a long minute, marking it in his mind.

There were candles and herbs in the bag he'd brought, carefully wrapped so they wouldn't be crushed or contaminated. He moved several guns and a taser to get to them, and started setting up a second ritual. No blood or circles this time. Just the fire and the incantations and his educated guess that the rite would help, would make the circle unbreakable again.

_Omnes anima silvani ad me veni..._

The words were Latin, but the sentiment went back much farther than that, to ancient animalistic practices attached to the worship of natural forces. If Pangalo was right, there was more in his brother than just the witch's will. She had grafted something on his soul that she had no control over, something she had asked for and was given, in the same way that demons that could be entreated upon to influence human events. Sam was betting on his own petition being answered as well, if these non-demonic, elemental forces actually existed. They would augment the circle, and keep his brother contained until Sam could remove her influence. He finished the ritual, and felt no change. The air was sharp and cold, scented with lavender, but otherwise the same. If it had worked, Sam had no way of knowing.

And that, Sam figured, was just par for the course.

He shrugged off his disappointment and fished out the notes he'd organized for the spell. Dean would come and Sam would save him or not. This would be the end of it, one way or another. The Winchesters had run out of road.

Sam was almost asleep on his feet when he heard Dean coming. The moon had risen and freezing cold had set in. He'd been pacing and watching, his fingers numb even through his gloves. He snapped his head around to look in the direction of the sound he'd felt more than heard, and was greeted by silver eyes. Dean wasn't trying particularly hard to hide his presence, just coming straight up the slope. Sam altered his position slightly, and waited for Dean to reach the right spot, waited for the circle to catch him so he could begin. His fingers itched to grab his flashlight and notes, but he stayed were he was, perfectly still.

He had his eyes on Dean the whole time. The moon was almost full, so he had enough light to distinguish the outline of another person. Yet somehow, five feet before the hidden trap, Dean vanished. He moved into the shadows and was gone, the shine of his eyes blinking out as though he'd stepped behind a curtain. Sam glanced around, searching the darkness carefully, but saw nothing. He listened and heard silence. There was nothing, no warning for what happened next.

It was pure, dumb luck that Sam was moving forward just as Dean fired. He saw the muzzle flash and dropped, pulling his flashlight as he went. He had a feeling it would be more useful to him than a gun, and he was right. He caught a glimpse of his brother turning away mechanically from the brightness, eyes closed against it, and could only hope it would ruin his night vision long enough for Sam to do what he had to do. He started the recitation immediately, glancing at the notes before him, but proceeding largely on memory. He moved as he went, hoping to draw Dean toward him and into the circle, trying not to think about how useless that was, when Dean was armed.

"_Thu, calde gethrungen, gebuh mech. Thu, forste gebunden, gebuh mech. Nearwiende isgebindum, Gebuh..._"

_You, fettered by cold, obey me. You, bound in frost, obey me. Confined by iron, obey..._

He kept going with the incantations, moving backwards and glancing around for signs of his brother. He saw him then: Dean, stumbling a little, and shaking his head as if to clear it. He wasn't far away. Sam finished the line he was on and paused to charge towards Dean, who heard him coming, but couldn't see well enough to dodge him. Sam grappled his brother, using his greater size to his advantage, and managed to wrestle him to the place he'd prepared. Dean landed on his back with a grunt, but immediately began rolling to his feet, groping for the gun he had dropped.

The circle didn't stop him from grabbing it.

"_Gecierr cearum seo seofedun hat ymb heortan..._"

_Submit to sorrows that used to seethe hot about the heart..._

Sam tried to keep reading, but he had to pause to pop a few rounds into Dean's chest. Dean shook them off and got to his feet. Sam felt like the world was ending in slow motion. He wasn't going to make it. He couldn't save his brother. If it was his brother. He looked into his eyes and didn't recognize Dean. He was hollowed out, a puppet for some dead witch's spell, and Sam couldn't bring him back. He saw again the blood-splashed room where Dean had begged for a bullet, heard the whispered word that so rarely passed his lips. _Please._

It had begun to snow, and tears were freezing to ice on his face. Still, he felt unnaturally calm. He emptied his magazine like it was just another day at the range. In the time it took Dean to recover, he was popping it out and slamming in the spare, the one he'd loaded with only one cartridge, because the ingredients were impossible to obtain in bulk. You couldn't pick up elemental sulfur at Wal-Mart, and demonically-tainted ritual objects didn't exactly grow on trees. He'd scraped together enough for one round, and that was all it would take. He raised the gun and fired.

It was a solid shot, catching Dean's center mass, though probably missing his heart. His brother stumbled to his knees, blood pouring from his mouth, and Sam was wishing he had another bullet for himself. He continued reciting the words he had so carefully memorized. Even though Dean was on his knees before him, choking on his own blood, the stream of unfamiliar syllables continued as though they had a life of their own, escaping out into frigid night air. Sam wasn't sure he could have stopped if he'd wanted to, but what was the point in fighting it? Dean was dying in front of him. It couldn't possibly make a difference...

"_Hungrum the innan slat merewerges mod._"

_The hunger tearing from within the sea-weary soul._

Dean raised a trembling, bloody hand, silver irises blazing. Somehow, he'd managed to hold on to his weapon, and despite the rapid blood loss, was lining up another shot. Sam could do nothing to stop him, having spent his only bullet. He had only words, and they didn't mean anything. He babbled uselessly in a dead language while Dean prepared to shoot him. He'd be dead before he could finish the spell.

"_Thu the ne swete forswelge..._"

_You, who cannot taste sweetness..._

The wind picked up quite suddenly, swirling the snow in furious vortexes all through the clearing. For just a fraction of a heartbeat, he felt something like an electric current crisscrossing through the trees, the ground, the air itself, connecting him to everything around him, and he felt those forces diving down the channel of his words, tunneling through him to get to Dean. His brother stopped. He froze in place, and Sam could feel the forces around them holding him there. The next section of the incantation came out of him in a rush, and the world seemed to fall away as he was swept away by the spell.

"..._ne sar gefele..._"

_...nor feel pain..._

He had never done magic that was this up-close and personal. Most of the time, performing a ritual was like putting on a show for a nonexistant audience. It didn't _feel_ like anything. Yet now he could feel the power the words had called down; it swept over and through him, until he could feel the lines of the spell in his mind, more vividly than the various grimoires could possibly represent them. For one overwhelming moment, he was holding his brother's life in his hands, and he knew that he could do virtually anything he liked with it. It was a terrifyingly intoxicating feeling, but it was quickly overshadowed by panic for his brother. Sam couldn't see, was perceiving the world now with a sense that did not have a name, but if he could have visualized his perception of Dean, it would have been horrifying.

The gunshot wound was the least of his worries: a more than physical injury, but nothing compared to what the witch had done. She had torn Dean's mind to shreds with her magic, gouging deep furrows in his soul that Sam was not sure would ever heal. Her chains had sliced into him mercilessly, tearing and ripping at what they sought to control, the injury they wrought exacerbated by Dean's struggle to hold on to himself. At first, Sam wasn't sure if there was anything left of his brother to save, but he recoiled in vicious denial at the thought. Distantly, he could feel more than hear his mouth forming the final words of the spell, felt the magic reach for those chains and unwind them. He felt himself vibrating with the effort of holding so much wild energy together, of focusing it for such a specific purpose.

"_Gecierr felaleofum tham the freothodest._"

_Submit to the dearly loved whom you protected._

As he concentrated on his desired outcome, lines of power suddenly reversed on themselves, diving back down to their roots in Dean. For a brief moment, Sam was exultant; it had worked. But the feeling did not last. His brother had the reins again, but he was screaming without making a sound, consumed in agony. It was too much; it would break him. Like every joint in his body being twisted the wrong way, his mind on fire, endless circuits of power rushing through his soul and it wouldn't _stop_...

Something snapped back on Sam and everything went white.


	10. Chapter 10

Dean knew where he was before he was fully awake. Oh, the wallpapers changed, the bedspreads had slightly different patterns, and every once in a while an acid trip disguised as interior decorating was splashed over the furniture. But if he'd seen five thousand motel rooms, he'd seen them all, and it was as close to waking up in his own bed as he was ever going to get.

He also knew that Sam was there. This was new in certain ways but not in others. He'd always been able to feel when a room was empty, whether his brother was there when he woke up. The new part was the shining _certainty_, the way Sam's presence burned in his mind like a distant beacon fire. He could track him without looking at him, whether he paced the room or sat or slept. Dean even imagined he knew Sam's mood, a roiling conflagration colored mostly by anger and grief and guilt.

He _was_ imagining it.

Wasn't he?

He definitely felt like he'd been run over by a truck. That wasn't imaginary. Not even unfamiliar, really. Each breath was waves of radiating agony, and his first thought was _drugs_. Why hadn't Sammy scored him some morphine? And that was when memory began to hit him, casting his mind back to that night, those woods where something had happened. Something.

"Dean!" Sam couldn't hide the relief in his voice. Relief that quickly turned to annoyance when Dean tried to get out of bed. Dean stared at him and allowed himself to be pushed back into a reclining position. Sam seemed okay, which ratcheted down his alarm somewhat. But there was a whisper of something when Sam told him to lie down. Something was wrong...

"Dean?"

Sam was looking at him anxiously, and that single word asked all sorts of questions, foremost among them a_re you yourself _but he didn't know how to answer that, not really. He felt scattered, like he'd left his car keys or his wallet somewhere, as though he'd forgotten something. Something important. It made it hard to move or speak. Everything was on a five-second delay and he was moving at half-speed, hearing his brother speak from a great distance. Every time he thought he'd pulled himself together, the pieces slipped through his fingers like sand. But Sammy was still looking at him, expecting an answer, and that meant something, Sammy did, baby Sammy, Sammy SammySammy-

_take your brother outside-_

"Dude, what did you shoot me with, fucking Kryptonite?" He had to cut his eyes away when Sam's relief washed over him like a tsunami. It was way better than morphine, even if it was heavily laced with self-loathing.

"Mostly sulfur, actually. Sort of thing that demons use when they want to kill something, ah, not...demonic."

"That's...weird."

"Well, I needed to keep you from killing me before I finished the ritual. It should have...I mean, are you...?"

"I'm back in the driver's seat," Dean assured him, doing his best to ignore the nagging sensation that something had gone seriously wrong. It was true that the witch's will was gone, but he still didn't feel entirely his own person. The ink on his arms burned.

Sam was talking again, explaining that he hadn't been able to do anything about the rite that had turned Dean into a real-life version of Wolverine and how that was probably a good thing, because it was the only reason he was still alive, and all Sam had done was doubled the _geis_ back on itself so that Dean was holding its reins, and he wanted to remove the spell completely, he really did, but he couldn't figure out how to do it safely, and even what he'd eventually come up with had been risky in the extreme, but it was the only way...

Dean tuned out the words after a while, understanding Sam's need to explain himself, to justify what he'd done. Dean's attention was flickering in and out like a TV with bad reception. It was hard to hold on to one thought for more than a few seconds at a time. The only coherent idea that stayed with him was a sensation of wrongness. He kept circling around it, knowing he could get there eventually if he just had some time...

And then what Sam was saying kind of clicked all at once, and he remembered what had happened in the woods that night, the sense of an implacable will guiding his steps, the disassociation from everything that used to mean something to him. And Sam had stopped him, held him there while he rewrote Dean's code into something that might be acceptable to both of them.

But it hadn't worked. Dean remembered that. It was an impossible sensation to forget, feeling as though he was being torn apart on an atomic level. It would have shredded his mind and soul, and he would have died. He was quite certain of that. So he had thrown the spell back, flung that searing energy in the only direction that seemed remotely safe: towards Sam. He couldn't be the one to hold his own leash, so the next best thing was to give it to Sam.

Except that Sam didn't seem to know what he had done.

"...doctor that wouldn't ask questions. It's been healing at an accelerated rate, though nothing like, well, normal-"

_Normal, ha_, he thought.

Dean lurched into a sitting position, feeling better by the minute. Predictably, his brother broke off his explanation of the story so far to reprimand Dean for trying to get out of bed.

"Lie down, Dean."

He could feel the order like a pressure on his skin, like claws dragging across his will. Sam probably didn't even realize he was doing it. He gritted his teeth and dug in. The pressure wavered and then broke, and Dean couldn't help letting out a little sigh of relief. This was...manageable. If he just told Sam...

He had a sudden vision of a possessed Sam, eyes black as the night sky, and he shuddered deep, closing his eyes against _that_ particular horror. It was probably the most unlikely scenario imaginable, considering the precautions they now took, but it was frightening enough to keep Dean's mouth shut.

"Dean!"

He pulled his attention back to the present. Sam was in his face, trying to get Dean to look at him. Oddly, the force of the witch's spell (what had Sam called it? A _geis_?) helped him focus. He let it bring him back to himself, and watched in fascination as Sam's concern was slowly colored with relief when his unconscious command was obeyed. It was such an easy thing to give Sam what he wanted. With a strange sort of awe, Dean wondered if there was anything he couldn't do when his own desires aligned with the power of that dark magic. And he couldn't help laughing at how fucked up that reaction was.

"It's not funny," Sam bitchfaced at him, which only made him laugh harder, which hurt. A lot. But he couldn't help it.

"Sorry, Sammy," he groaned before the kid started in on him. Sam was radiating worry, and Dean didn't blame him. He wasn't exactly the poster child for mental health right now. "I'm fine, really. Just gimme some time to get my head together. She didn't exactly leave everything where she found it, y'know? But...I'm still here. You did good."

He said this last with no trace of mirth, looking Sam right in the eyes, because he _meant_ it, as thoroughly as he'd ever meant anything, and he needed his brother to know that. He wasn't really prepared for the avalanche of emotion that tumbled toward him in response to that short sentence. It took every ounce of his control to keep from gasping. Instead, he leaned back into the bed, and threw an arm over his eyes.

"I need you to do something for me, though," he said thickly.

"Yeah, sure. What do you need?"

"Cheeseburgers. Cheeseburgers and pie." He snapped his fingers. "Go. I'm starvin'." Sam said nothing, but he didn't need to. His eyeroll was audible. The Impala's keys rattled and he was out the door.

As soon as it shut, Dean rolled over and exhaled his wonder. Everything that had happened, the weeks of horror and agony, it was all suddenly worth it. He would do it again in a heartbeat. Anything for that one second of his brother's attention, when Sam had looked at him and loved him.

* * *

"I'm glad everyone's alright. Thanks for calling, Sam." Pause. "No, that's...that's okay." Longer pause, weight shifting, fingers anxiously drumming marble. "No offense, but I kind of hope I never see you guys again."

She said goodbye and put the phone down, trying to feel some relief that it was finally over. It was a little unreal, almost anticlimactic. But Charity supposed she should prefer that over a violent ending. Sam had sounded as tired over the phone as he had been when she'd last seen him. Although he also sounded...calm. When he'd been searching for his brother, every word was laced with barely concealed panic.

She couldn't imagine how other people did it, relying only on little body language clues to read emotions and intentions. Talking to Sam just made her exhausted and frustrated.

The phone call had interrupted her brushing her teeth, so she finished and climbed into bed, thinking about the night Dean had shared it with her, and feeling guilty for turning Sam down when he asked if she wanted to talk to him.

She, of all people, should have known better.

But that was the problem. She knew Dean, knew him in a way she was sure very few people did. She had been shown something beautiful and pure, and then been forced to watch it destroyed. What had been done to him was so wrong, she couldn't bear to look at him, to see what he had lost. Even if Sam had saved him, even if the damage had been reversed, she was afraid of the scars she would see. Part of her wanted to talk to Dean more than anything, to see for herself that his nightmare was over. But another part of her, a bigger part, was just not willing to risk another glimpse of that darkness she saw every night in her dreams already.

Alone, she buried her face in her pillow and sobbed her shame into the cotton sheets.

But when she finally slipped into sleep, it wasn't Dean's silver eyes she saw. Instead, she dreamed of a man with yellow eyes who called her daughter.

END


End file.
